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IS JESUS OF NAZARETH — 
THE SON OF GOD? 





IS JESUS OF NAZARETH 
THE SON OF GOD? 


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DEC 9 - 1926 
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BY 


H . SCHEUING 


Author of “Psychology of Mediumship” 





(The Christopher Publishing Heuse 
Boston, U. S. A. 





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DEDICATION 


Discoursing the question “Is Jesus of Nazareth 
the Son of God?” and publishing the result of my 
Psychic Researches concerning the answer to the 
question, I fully realize the responsibility which falls 
upon me, and being aware that the orthodox reader 
may be inclined to condemn me, I must point out 
that as long as we do not care to make ourselves ac- 
quainted with the affairs and the men of the times 
during which our present day Religious Concepts 
came into existence, we have no right whatever to 
condemn those who—seeking knowledge—studied 
the matter. 

There are certain facts, which while not inspir- 
ing us with faith in the so called “Holy Men of the 
Early Church,” show us how an EMINENT TRUTH 
can be destroyed as yell as misused; how we, being 
brought up in Creeds, not only miss the Great Fund- 
amental Truth, but also entirely loose our Spiritual 
Perspective by becoming Materialists, because we 
failed to realize the Underlying Spiritual Principle 
connected with all Religious Concepts. 

This Spiritual Principle, of course, is ‘‘Christ’’, 
but since we can not comprehend this Issue without 
making ourselves acquainted with the Fundamentals 
of the so called Mysteries contained in the Ancient 
Religious Concepts, we must do some Research Work 
ourselves, and this we can do only by studying the 
present day phenomena. The result of this study 
will bring before us the same Fundamental Facts 
the Apostles taught, consequently we learn gradually 
to understand the Spiritual Issue and thus, whatever 
the Leaders of the Early Church did does not worry 
us at all, for now we even understand them. Having 
by our own Research Work laid the foundation to a 
New Reformation we can thus help to better the 
Moral and Physical Condition of Man. 

Knowing that the Truth of the Spiritual Facts 
received in Psychic Research makes us free, I dedi- 
cate this book to the Truthseeker. 


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FOREWORD 


In the year 1910 I was going over some of my 
old manuscripts which I had for many years in a very 
fragmentary form, and which dating back to about 
1890 contained my ideas in regard to the Old and 
New Testamental Supernaturalism, with which my 
reasoning very severely collided. I had for many 
years intended to finish and to publish these manu- 
scripts, but for various reasons I never came to it. 
However in the year 1910, while discoursing such 
miatters with friends, who were thinking as I did, I 
again gave the matter new thought and so I begun 
in all earnest to finish what I had begun. Finding 
that I had lost many references, I went to the library 
and worked through a number of books by various 
authors, some of whom were familiar to me from 
previous studies. Thus I was ‘able to fill in the lost 
kates which are given in the historic part of this 


At the time when I was just about ready to have 
my manuscript iin shape for publication something 
happened again, and the matter had to be postponed. 
Six years passed and circumstances altered cases. 
This time a more thorough investigation of the 
Phenomena forced me to absolutely change my ideas, 
and instead of becoming a foe to the Old and New 
Testamental Phenomena, I became a convert to them, 
that is: “I was involuntarily forced to become a stu- 
dent of Psychic Research in my own behalf, and thus 
a defender of the very thing I had tried to help to 
destroy.” 

My book on “The Psychology of Mediumship” 
(Two Worlds in One) was the result of this study 
(published in 1923), andthe present book is the 
natural sequence thereof. 


THE AUTHOR. 


“Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I 
said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods. unto whom the 
word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say 
ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into 
the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of 
God?” (John, ch. X. v. 34-36.) 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Is Jesus of Nazarath the Son of God? ........ 
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Is Jesus of Nazareth the Son 
of God? 


From a dogmatic viewpoint this question is em- 
phatically answered with yes, in fact to ask the ques- 
tion appears to an orthodox clergy, if not to deny, 
at least to doubt the principle doctrine of the Christ- 
ian church, hence to ask the question. may imply here- 
sy. However, from a human standpoint such a ques- 
tion implies the questioner reasons, that he asks for 
some kind of a tangible assurance after which he is 
willing to accept the respective doctrine. 

The question “Is Jesus of Nazareth the Son of 
God?” is not the kind which can be answered with a 
shrug of the shoulder, for it is a question of the ut- 
most importance, hence demands study, and includes 
a number of other questions. 

Eusebius, the father of the Church History says 
in Ecc. Hist. Lib. V, ch. 22: “They (the first Christ- 
ians) affirm that all their ancestors, yea, and the 
apostles themselves, were of the same opinion and 
taught the same with them, and that this is their 
doctrine, so they called it: Jesus a man like other 
men, we all can equal or in some respect excel him. 
(1). That this doctrine was preached and embrac- 
ed unto the time of Victor XIII, Bishop after Peter 
and corrupted by his successor Zephyrimus.” 

Eusebius states further in his Ecc. Hist. Lib. 
III, ch. 24: ‘They believed Jesus to be a simple, a 
common man, born as other men, of Mary and Jos- 
eph.” (2), and in Gibbon’s Rome Vol. I p. 515 we 
read: “Itis a well known fact that the Ebonites 


(1) John XIV, v 12. (2) 1. Gal. IV, v. 4, 


12 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


(Poor Men) were the immediate successors of the 
Congregation of Jerusalem, that Joseph and Mary 
and their sons were members of this sect of poor 
people. The Ebonites or Nazarenes were rejected 
by the Jews as “Apostates” and by the Egyptian and 
Roman Christians as ““Heretics’”. As such they were 
tyrannically prosecuted until they completely disap- 
peared. The last traces of them are discovered in 
the IV. century, but then they either melted into the 
Roman Christian Church or into the Jewish Syna- 
gogue. With their disappearance the original gos- 
pel of Matthew perished.” 

_ Eusebius said: “It is lawful to lie and to cheat 
for the cause of Christ” and in ch. XXXI book XII 
—PRAE PARATIO EVANGELICA—<can be found: 
“How far it may be proper to use falsehood as a 
medium for the benefit of those who require to be 
deceived.” Closing his work he says: “I have re- 
peated whatever may rebound to the glory, and sup- 
pressed all that could tend to the disgrace of our re- 
ligion.”’ 

“Jesus of Nazareth was not called the Son of 
God before the middle of the second century, and it 
was Justine Martyr, a Christian convert from the 
Platonic School, who promulgated the idea. This 
knowledge he does not ascribe to the Scriptures but 
to the special favor of God.” (Israel Worsley’s In- 
quiry p. 54.—Higgins Ana. Vol. I. p. 16.) | 

Cardinal Woolsey said:“....If they did not 
destroy the press, the press would destroy them”— 
but Pope Leo X stated: “It is well known how profit- 
able this fable of Christ has been to us”, and Arch- 
deacon Paley declared he could ill afford to have a 
conscience.” 

“It was held as a maxim that it was not only 
lawful but praisworthy to deceive and even to use 
the expedient of a lie in order to advance the cause 
of truth and piety.” (Mosheim Vol. I. p. 198.) 

Isaac de Cassanbon, an other great ecclesiastical 
scholar, said: “It mightily affects me to see how 
many there were in the earliest time of the Church 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 13 


who considered it as a capital exploit to lend to 
heavenly truth the help of their own inventions in 
order that the new doctrine might more readily be 
allowed by the Wise among the Gentiles.’’—‘“‘These 
officious lies they were wont to say, were devised for 
a good end.” (Gile’s Hebrew and Christian Rec. 
Vol, II. p..19.) 

There seems to be no historic record in regard 
to the Life of Jesus of Nazareth, and the one con- 
tained in the writings of Josephus seems to have been 
proven afraud. It is said also that Tacitus refered 
to the wholesale slaughtering of the Christians under 
Nero A. D. 64, but this seems to be a fraud also, for 
the manuscripts of Tacitus were not known to the 
world before the fifteenth century, and we know that 
the Fathers of the Church falsified everything that 
came into their hands to make their own ideas plaus- 
ible. (see Daille on “The Right Use of the Fathers’’) 

Neither of the two Plinys seems to have known: 
a thing about him. Origen states (ch. XX XV book I) 
“Josephus who had mentioned John the Baptist, did 
not acknowldege Christ.”’ (Lardner Vol. VI. ch. III) 

There seemed to have been many Messiahs who 
aspired the Jewish Crown, and Josephus writes 
about these affairs as follows: 

“A religious enthusiast called the Samaritans 
together upon Mount Gerizim and assured them that 
he would work a miracle. So they came thither arm- 
ed and thought the discourse of the man probable. 
As they abode in a certain village, which was called 
Tirakaba, they got the rest together of them and de- 
sired to go up to the mountain in a great multitude 
together, but Pilate prevented their going up by seiz- 
ing upon the roads by a great band of horsemen and 
footmen, who fell upon those who were gotten to- 
gether in the village, and others of them they put to 
flight, while some of them they slew and took a great 
many of them alive, the principal of whom and also 
the most potent of those fled away, Pilate ordered 


14 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


she (Josephus-Antiquities, book XVIII ch. 
“Judas, the Galilean, (1) at the time when Cy- 
renius came to tax the Jewish people, declared that 
this taxation was no better than an introduction to 
slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert its liberty, 
and prevailed upon his countrymen to revolt.” (Jose- 
phus—Wars of the Jews b. II ch. VIII, 1.) 

To inspire a revolt, of course, was at that time 
high treason, and the Ancient Romans had a law 
which put the penalty of Crucifixion on such a thing, 
but they crucified only slaves and rebels. (Marty- 
dom. of Jesus, p. 96.); 

“Apollonius of Tyana, in Cappadocia, born in 
the latter part of the reign of Augustus (4 years B. 
C.) was celebrated for his wonderful miracles. 
Preaching in Ephesus, its people did not believe in 
his prophesies, so he left and went to Smyrna where 
the people believed, but'as an epidemic raged in 
Ephesus, as prophesied by him, the people of Ephe- 
sus sent for him. Arriving in Ephesus he said to 
the people: “Be not dejected I will this day put a stop 
to the disease’, and the pestilence was stopped as 
he said. (Philostratus p. 146). In the city of 
Athens he drove a demon out of a young man (2), 
the demon swearing that he would never enter into 
an other. (Ibid p. 158.) The young man after this 
became a follower of Pythagoras. In Rome Apol- 
lonius restored a dead maiden to life by taking her 
hand and speaking to her. She was the daughter of 
a familie of rank (3). In Tarsus he healed a young 
man bitten thirty days before by a mad dog. (Phil. 
p. 285-286.) 

“Domitan, emporer of Rome, had Apollinius ar- 
rested on the charge that he allows himself to be 


(1) Acts ch. V, v. 37. 
(2) Matt. XII, v. 22. 
(3) Luke VIII, v. 41-42. Matt. IX, v. 18. Mark V, v. 22-24. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 15 


worshipped and for speaking against the reigning 
powers and pretending that his words were inspired 
by the Gods. He was cast into prison, loaded with 
irons, and as Damus, one of his disciples, visited 
him, asking him when he thought to be set free, 
Apollonius answered: “This depends upon myself” — 
and drawing his feet out of the shackles he said: 
“Keep up your spirit, you see the freedom I enjoy.”’ 
(1) While on trial he said to the emperor: ‘You 
cannot kill me because Iam not a mortal’’—and say- 
ing this he vanished. This happened at noon in 
Rome, and on the evening of the same day he ap- 
peared to some of his friends at Puteoli, more than 
150 miles from Rome, who of course could not be- 
lieve that it was he in the body, but he told them, 
stretching out his hands: “Take it, and if I escape 
ibe you, regard me as an apparition (2) (Phil. p. 

The early .Christian Fathers do not deny the 
miracles of Apollonius but state he worked them in 
the name of Satan (8), who had them committed 
for the purpose of leading the Believers in Christ 
astray. 

“Devils were cast out daily. The Rabbis con- 
firmed their sayings with a miracle. (Geikie: Life 
of Christ, Vol. II, p. 160.) 

Josephus stated (Jewish Antiquities bk. VIII. 
ch. II.) that king Solomon was an expert in casting 
out devils, and that he saw himself how his country- 
man Eliezer did cast out devils in the presence of a 
vast multitude. 

Tacitus tells us that Vespasian, born ten years 
after Christ, performed wonderful miracles for the 
good of mankind, that he cured a blind man in Alex- 


(1) Acts XII, v. 7. XVI, v. 26. 
(2) Luke XXIV, v. 39. 
(3). Matt. XII, v. 24. 


16 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


andria by spittle (1), and a lame man by the mere 
touch of his foot. The same Historian tells us how 
Vespasian cured a man’s paralytic hand (2). (Tac- 
itus, Hist. Lib. IV. ch. IXXXI) Tacitus wrote his 
history A. D. 98. 

“Among the numerous gospels in circulation a- 
mong the Christians of the first three centuries there 
was one entitled “The Gospel of the Egyptians.” 
Epiphanius (A. D. 385) says: ‘‘Many things are pro- 
posed in this gospel in a hidden, mysterious manner, 
as by our Savior, as though he had said to his disci- 
ples that the Father was the same person, the Son 
the same person, and the Holy Ghost the same per- — 
son.” 

“It is admitted by the most learned of the Chris- 
tian Theologians that the Gospel of the Egyptians 
was in existence before either of the canonical gos- 
pels and that it contained the doctrine of the Trinity 
(established in the Christian Church not until A. D. 
327). This doctrine was taught by the Essenes in 
Alexandria, in Egypt, which was called the land of 
the Trinities.”’ 


(1) Mark VIII. v. 23. John IX. v. 6. 
(2) Mark III. v. 1-6. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 17 


THE ESSENES. 


“The Essenes were called Physicians of the Soul, 
or ‘“Therapeutae”, being resident both in Judea and 
Egypt. They probably spoke or had their sacred 
books in Chaldee. They were Pythagoreans, as is 
proved by all their forms, ceremonies and doctrines, 
and called themselves “Sons of Jesse” (1). If the 
Pythagoreans or Cenobitae—as they were called by 
Jamblicus—were Buddhists, the Essenes were Bud- 
dhists. They lived in Egypt, on the lake of Pare- 
bole or Maria, in monasteries. These are the very 
places in which we found formerly the Gymnoso- 
_ phists, or Samaneans, or Buddhist Priests to have 
lived, which Gymnosophists are placed also by Ptole- 
my in most Eastern India. Their parishes, churches, 
bishops, priests, deacons, and festivals are all identi- 
cally the same as the Christians. They thad apostolic 
founders, the manners which distinguished the im- 
mediate apostles of Christ, scriptures divinely in- 
spired, the same allegorical mode of interpreting 
them, which has since obtained among Christians, 
and all the same order of performing public worship. 
They had missionary stations or colonies of their 
community established in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, 
Ephesus, Phillippi, Colosse and Thessalonica, pre- 
cisely such and in the same circumstances as those 
to whom St. Paul addressed his letters in these 
places. All the fine moral doctrines which are at- 
tributed to him, are found among the doctrines of 
these Ascetics.”’ (Higgins) 

Theophilius Gale states:..‘‘The origination or 
rise of the Essenes among the Jews I conceive by the 
best conjectures I can make from Antiquity, to be in 


(1) I Sam. XVI, v. 1. Matt. I, v. 6. 


18 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


or immediately after the Babylonian Captivity, 
though some make it later.” 

_ The Principle of the Essenes were: ‘To seek 
first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness (1). 
Not to lay up treasure upon earth (2). They de- 
manded of those who wanted to join them to sell all 
possessions and divide it among the poor breth- 
ren(3). They had all things in common and ap- 
pointed one of them steward to manage the common 
bag (4). Essenism put all its members on the same 
level, and commanded to call no man master upon, 
earth, (5) and laid great stress upon being meek 
and lowly in spirit (6). The Essenes commended 
the poor in spirit (7), those who hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart 
and the peacemaker (8). They combined the heal- 
ing of the body with that of the soul (9). They de- 
clared that the power to cast out evil spirits, to per- 
form miraculous cures (10) etc, should be possessed 
by their disciples as a sign of their belief. They did 
a ata their answer was “yea, yea and nay nay”’ 

ee cs a 


Mes Bae 


(1.5. 6. 7. 8.) Matt. V. v. 3-10. 

(2) Matt. VI. v. 19. 

(3) Matt. XIX. v. 21. Acts V. v. 1-11. 
(4) John XII. v. 6. XIII. v. 29. 

(5) Matt. XIX. v. 17. 

(9) Luke IV. v. 18. 

(10) Matt. X. v. 1. 

(11) Matt. V. v. 34. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 19 


When they started on a mission of mercy they 
provided neither gold nor silver neither two coats, 
neither shoes, but relied on hospitality for sup- 
port (1). They opposed war (2), but when they 
went on a perilous journey they took weapons with 
them. ‘They abstained from connubial intercourse 
(3). They did not offer animal sacrifice, their aim 
was to live a life of purity and holiness to be the 
temples of the Holy Spirit and to be able to .pro- 
phesy (4).” 

Dr. Ginsburg says: “It will be hardly doubted 
that our Savior himself belonged to this holy brother- 
hood. This will especially be apparent when we re- 
member the whole Jewish Community at the Advent 
of Christ was divided into three parties: ‘“The Phar- 
isees,‘the Sadducees and the Essenes,” and that every 
Jew had to belong to one of these sects. Jesus who 
in all things conformed to the Jewish law, and who 
was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sin- 
ners, would therefore naturally associate himself 
with that Order of Judiasm which was most con- 
genial to his holy nature. Moreover the fact that 
Christ, with the exception of once, was not heard in 
public until his thirtieth year, implying that he lived. 
in seclusion with his fraternity and that though he 
frequently rebuked the Scribes, Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees, never denounced the Essenes, strongly con- 
firms this conclusion.”’ (Ginsburg: Essenes p. 24) 

The early followers of Christ did not call them- 
selves ‘Christians’, they called themselves ‘‘Breth- 
ern, Disciples, Believers and Saints.” Where ever 
the name “Christian” appears in the New Testament 
(it occurs only three times) it came from people out- 


(1) Mark VI. v. 8-11. 

(2) James IV. v. 1-3. Matt. XXVI. v. 62, 
(3) Matt. V.v. 28. XIX. v. 12. 

(4) 1 Cor. XIV. v. 1. 


20 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


side the Church, and as we know that Socrates and: 
other Philosophers were called “Christians”, and 
that also the worshippers of Serapis in Egypt called 
themselves “Christians”, and the priests of Serapis 
called themselves “Bishops of Christ’, we see that 
the idea of the ‘“‘Annointed”’ was also borrowed from 
the Heathen.” (Just. Martyr: Apol. I. C. IV C.LVI.) 

“Chrest” means “‘good and kind”; “Chrestians” 
means the best of men, and is also used i in the sense 
of the “‘Anointed,” the ‘Messiah. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 21 


CHRISHNA 


“Chrishna”’, the Hindu Savior, was born of a 
chaste virgin, called ‘‘Devaki’, who was selected by 
the Lord for His purpose an account of her puri- 
ty (1). A chorus of Devatas celebrated with song 
the praise of Devaki, exclaiming: “In the delivery 
of this favored woman all nature shall have cause 
to exult (2). (Hist. Hindustan, Vol. XI. p. 39.) 
The birth of Chrishna was announced by his star 
in the heavens (8) (same Vol. p. 317. 336). On the 
morning of his birth the quarters of the horizon 
were irradiated with joy, as if moonlight was dif- 
fused over the whole earth; the spirits and the 
nymphs of heaven danced and sang and the clouds 
emitted low and pleasing sounds (4). (Vishnu 
Purana p. 502). Chrishna, though royally descend- 
ed (5), was actually born in astate most abject and 
humiliating, having been brought into the world in 
a cave(6). The moment he was born the whole 
cave was splendidly illuminated and the faces of his 
father and mother emitted rays of glory. Soon aft- 
er his mother was delivered, and while she was 
weeping over him, lamenting his unhappy birth, the 
infant assumed the power of speech and soothed and 
comforted his mother. (Hist. Hind. Vol. XI p. 311.) 

The divine child was recognized and adored by 
cowherders who postrated themselves before the 
heaven born child. Chrishna was received with di- 


(1) Luke I. v. 26-27. 
(2) Luke I. v. 28. 

(3) Matt. IT. v. 2. . 

(4) Luke II. v. 8-14. 
(5) Matt. I: v. 6-16. 
(6) Luke II. v. 16. 


22 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


vine honors and presented with gifts of sandalwood 
and perfumes (1). (Orient Rel. p. 500.—Imman’s 
Ancient Faiths, Vol. XI. p. 3538.) 

Soon after his birth the holy Indian Prophet 
“Nared” (2), hearing of the infant’s fame, paid him 
a visit at Gokul and examined the stars and declared 
him to be of celestial descent. (Hist. Hind. Vol. XI. 
p. 317.) Chrishna was born when Nanda, his fost- 
erfather, was away from home, having gone to the 
city to pay his taxes or yearly tribute to the king (3) 
(Vishnu Purana Bk. V. ch. 111). Chrishna’s fath. 
er was warned by “heavenly voices” to flee with the 
child to Gacool, across the river Jumna, as the reign- 
ing monarch sought his life (4). The ruler of the 
country having been informed of the birth of the 
divine child, sought to destroy it (5). 

Mathura, the city in which Chrishna was born, 
is the place where he performed his most extraordin- 
ary miracles. (Hist. Hind. Vol. XI. p. 317. 
Asiatic Researches Vol. I p. 259.) 

Chrishna was preceded by Rama, who was born 
a short time before him (6), and whose life was 
sought by Kausa, the ruling monarch (7), at the 
time he attempted to destroy Chrishna. (Hist. Hind. 
Vol. XI. p. 318.) 

Chrishna was raised among shepherds, but lat- 
er was taught the sciences by a preceptor and as- 
tonished (8) and perplexed his eminent tutor with a 
variety of the most intricate questions and perform- 
ed miracles such as: Curing a man who had been bit- 


CL) Mati wionie 

(2) Luke II. v. 24-32. 
(3) Luke II. v. 4-6. 
(4) Matt. II. v. 13, 14. 
(5) Matt. II. v. 16. 
(6) Luke I. v. 17. 
(7) Luke IX. 9. 

(8) Luke II. 46-50. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 23 


ten by a serpent. One of his first miracles was the 
curing of a leper (1), (same vol. p. 319 and ch. 
XXVII.) <A poor crippled woman came (2) with a 
vessel of spices, sweet scented oils, etc, and made 
a certain sign on his forehead, casting the rest upon 
his head. (same Vol. p. 319, 320.) 

Chrishna was crucified and is represented with 
arms extended, hanging on a cross (3). A _ black 
circle surrounded the moon, the sun darkened at 
noon (4) and calamities and bad omens of every 
kind came at the time of his death. The sky rained 
fire and ashes, flames burnt dusky and livid, demons 
committed depredations on earth; at sunrise and 
sunset thousands of figures were seen skirmishing 
in the air, spirits were seen on all sides (5). (Prog- 
Rel. Ideas Vol. I p. 71). 

Chrishna was pierced by an arrow and said to 
the hunter who shot him: ‘Go, Hunter, through my 
favor, to heaven, the abode of the Gods (6). (Vis- 
hnu Purana p. 612) Chrishna descended to hell, and 
after being put to death rose again (7). He as- 
cended bodily into heaven and many persons wit- 
nessed the ascent (8). He is to come again on 
earth (9) and will appear on a white horse. At 
his approach. the sun will be darkened, the earth will 
tremble and the stars fall from the firmament (10). 
He is to be judge of the dead on the last day (11). 





(1) Luke V. 12-16. 

(2) Luke VII. 37-38. 

(3) John XIX. 16. 

(4) Luke XXIII. 44-45. 

(5) Matt. XXVII. 52-53. 

(6) Luke XXIII. 43. 

(7) John XX. 14. Peter III. 19. 
(8) Luke XXIV. 50-51. Revelations XIX. 11-16. 
(9) Matt. XXIV. 3-27. 

(10) Matt. XXIV. 29. 

(11) Matt. X. 15. XXV. 31-46. 


24 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


(Oriental Rel. p. 594.) Chrishna is the Alpha and 
Omega, the Beginning, the Middle and the End of 
all things (1). (Geeta. Lec. X. p. 85). Chrishna, 
while on earth, was always in strife with the Evil 
Spirit. He is described as a Superhuman Organ 
of Light, to whom the Superhuman Organ of Dark- 
ness (2) was opposed. He is presented “bruising 
the head of the serpent, and standing upon him (3). 
Chrishna strewed his way with miracles, raising 
the dead, healing the sick, restoring the maimed, the 
deaf and the blind, supporting the weak against 
the strong, and the oppressed against the powerful. 
The people crowded his way and adored him as God. 

Chrishna had a beloved desciple by name Ar- 
juna (4) (Bhagavat Geeta). He was transfigured 
(5) before his disciples. ‘All in an instant, with a 
thousand suns, blazing with dazzling luster, so be- 
held he the glory of the universe collected in the one 
person of the God of Gods. (Williams: Hinduism 
p. 215). He preached very nobly and sublimely, he 
was pure and chaste and even washed the feet of the 
Brahmins (6). (Indian Ant. 111. p. 46 Asiatic Re- 
searches Vol. I. p. 273). He was the Supreme Bra- 
hma, though it may be a mystery how the Supreme 
should assume the form of man. (Vishnu Purana 
p. 492). Heis the second person in the Hindu Trin- 
ity: Brahma, Vishnu and Siva; Chrishna is the 
Vishnu in human form (7). 

Chrishna said: ‘Let him if seeking God by deep 
abstraction, abandon his possessions and hopes, be- 
take himself to some secluded spot and fix his heart 


{ 


{ 
reo SE 


(1) Reveiio Ss VR a hS eX eI 18: 

(2) John I. 4. JII. 19. VIII. 12, 

(3) Gen. III. 15. Rom. XVI. 20. 

(4) John XIII. 23. 

(5) Mark IX. 2, 

(6) John XIII. 5. 

(7) John X. 30, 38. Matt. XXVIII. 19. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 25 


and thoughts on God alone (1).—Whatever thou 
doest perform, whatever thou eatest, whatever thou 
givest to the poor, whatever thou offerest in sacri- 
fice, whatever thou doest as an act of Holy Pre- 
sence, do all this to me (2), O, Arjuna. I am the 
greatest sage without Beginning. I am the Ruler 
and All-Sustainer. Iam the cause of the whole uni- 
verse, through me it is created and dissolved, on me 
all things within it hang and suspend like pearls 
Sisy a string (3). (Williams: Hinduism p. 211- 
213). 

Chrishna said: “I am the Light, the Sun and 
the Moon, far, far beyond the darkness. I am the 
Brilliance in the Flame, the Radiance in all that is 
radiant and the Light of Lights (4) ,—I am the Sus- 
tainer of the world, its Friend and Lord. I am its 
Way and Refuge (5). I am the Goodness of the 
Good, I am the Beginning, the Middle, End, Eternal 
Time, the Birth, the Death of all (6). Then be not 
sorrowful, from all thy sins I will deliver thee. 
Think then thou on me, have faith in me, adore and 
worship me; thus shalt thou come to me, O Arjuna, 
thus shalt thou then rise to my supreme abode, 
where neither sun nor moon had need to shine, for 
know that all the luster they possess is mine (7). 
(Williams Hinduism p. 213-214.) 

Chrishna was called: ‘‘The Savior, Redeemer, 
Preserver, Comforter, Mediator, The Resurrection 
and the Life, the Lord of Lords, the Holy One, the 
Good Shepherd, etc.” 

Rev. J. P. Lundy says (Monumental Christiani- 





(1) Matt. VI. 6. 

(2); ICor: X. 31, 

(3) John I. 3. Col. I. 14-16. 
(4) John VIII. 12.. 

(5) John XIV. 6. 

LO} Rest Lis 18. 

(7) Rev. XXI. 23. 


26 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


ty p. 151): “Both, the name of Chrishna and the 
general outline of his history, were long anterior to 
the birth of our Savior, as a very certain thing, and. 
probably extended to the time of Homer, nearly 900 
years before Christ, or more than a hundred years 
before Isaiah lived and prophesied. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 27 


BUDDHA 


“Buddha” was born of a virgin named “Maya’’, 
who conceived him without carnal intercourse. The 
incarnation of Buddha was brought about by the 
descent of the Divine Power, called Holy Ghost, up- 
on the virgin Maya (1). The birth of Buddha was 
announced in the heavens by an asterim which was 
seen rising on the horizon. It is called the “‘Messi- 
anic Star’(2). He was born on Christmas day. 
The Devas (angels) in heaven and earth sang prais- 
es to the “Blessed One” and said: “‘Today Bodhisat- 
wa is born on earth, to give joy and peace to man 
and angels, to shed light in the dark places and to 
give sight to the blind (3). Buddha was visited 
by wise men who recognized in this marvelous infant 
all the characters of divinity and he had scarcely 
seen the day before he was hailed the God of the 
Gods. The infant Buddha was presented with cost- 
ly jewels and precious substances (4). (Bunsen’s 
Angel Messiah p. 10, 25, 44.) 

When Buddha was an infant, just born, he 
spoke to his mother and said: “I am the greatest 
among men.” (Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism p. 
145. 146). His life was threatened by King Bim- 
bazara (5). (Hist. of Buddha p. 103, 104, Beal). 
He surprised his masters (6). When twelve years 
old he was presented in the temple. His ancestry 
is traced from his father Soahodana through vari- 

: paid 





| 
(1) Luke I. 35. 
(2) Luke II. 9. Matt. II. 29. 
(3) Luke II. 13-14. 
(4) Matt. II. 11. 
(5) Matt. II. 13. 
(6) Luke II. 46, 47. 


28 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? | 


ous individuals and races, all of royal dignity (1), 
to Maha Sammata, the first monarch of the world. 
When Buddha started to adopt a religious life, Mara, 
the devil, tempted him, saying: “Do not adopt a re- 
ligious life and in seven days thou shalt become em- 
peror of the world.” Buddha would not heed the 
words of the Evil One and said to him: “Get thee 
away from me.” After Mara left him, the skies 
rained flowers and delicate odors pervaded the air. 
He fasted for a long period (2). He was baptized 
and the Holy Ghost was present (3). (Bunsen’s 
Angel Messiah p. 45). 

Toward the end of his life he was transfigur- 
ed (4) on a mountain in Ceylon. A flame of fire 
descended upon him, encircling the crown of his 
head with light (5). The glory of his person shone 
forth with double power that his body was glorious 
as a bright golden! image, and his body was divided 
into three parts, from each of which issued a ray of 
light. Buddha performed great miracles. By 
prayers in the name of Buddha his followers expect 
the rewards of paradise. When he died and was 
buried the coverings of his body unrolled them- 
selves and the lid of his coffin was opened by super- 
natural powers (6). (Bunsen’s Angel Messiah p. 
49). Heascended bodily into heaven when his mis- 
sion on earth was fulfilled (7) and is to come again 
to restore the world to order and happiness. He is 
the judge of the dead, the Alpha and Omega, the 
Supreme Being, the Eternal One and said: “Let all 


sins that were committed in this world fall on me © 





(1) Matt. I. 1-16. 

(2) Luke IV. 1-12. 

(3) Luke III. 21, 22. 

(4) Matt. XVII. 2. 

(5) Psychology of Mediumship. p. 78. 

(6) Matt. XXVIII. 2. Mark XVI. 4. 

(7) Mark XVI. 19. Luke XXIV. 51. Acts I. 9. 


lh it , ie a a 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 29 


‘that the world may be delivered. (Muller Hist. San- 
script p. 80.) 

Buddha came not to destroy, but to fulfill the 
law (1). (Muller Science and Rel. p. 248). His aim 
was to establish a kingdom of heaven, and he said: 
“Though mount Sumara were to crack to pieces and 
the great ocean be dried up, yet, Ananda, be assured 
the words of Buddha are true’”’ (2). (Beal Hist. of 
Buddha p.11). Hesaid: “There is no passion more 
violent than voluptuousness. Happily there is but 
one such passion. If there were two, not a man in 
the whole universe could follow the truth. Beware 
fixing your eyes upon women (8). If you find 
yourself in their company, let be as though you were 
not present. If you speak with them guard your 
heart. (Progressive Rel. Ideas Vol. I. p. 228.) He 
said a wise man should avoid married life as it were 
a burning pit of live coal. One who is not able to 
live ie ‘a state of celibacy should not commit adult- 
ery (4). 





(Ll) Matt. V;:.17. 

(2) Matt. XXIV. 35. 

(3) Matt. V. 27-29. 

(4) Matt. XIX. 10-12. I. Cor. VII. 1-2. Gal. V. 16-17, 
James IV. 1-3. 


30 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


THE VIRGIN MOTHER 


The Ancient Egyptians worshipped Isis, the 
mother of Horus and pictured her in their monu- 
ments with the child Horus in her lap. Thus Isis 
is called: “Our Lady, the Queen of Heaven, Star of 
the Sea, Governess, Mother of God, Intercessor, Im- 
maculate Virgin, ete. (Bonwick’s Egyptian Belief 
p. 141). She is usually represented nursing Horus. 
Sometimes Isis is appearing without Horus, but in 
this case she is covered entirely with a veil, repre- 
senting chasteness; or she is represented standing 
on the crescent moon with twelve stars around her 
head. (Draper’s Science and Religion. 47- 48). The 
crescent moon is the symbol of Isis and Juno, which 
is Yoni of the Hindus. (Cox Arian Myth. Vol. 11. 
p. 119.) In the Egyptian and Hindu Mythology 
the infant of the virgin is made to bruise the head 
of the serpent. (Gen. III. 15). 

The ancient Chaldeans believed in a heavenly 
virgin, who was pictured with a child in her arms. 
She was the one to whom erring sinners could ap- 
peal with more chance of success than to a stern 
father. 

Mylitta, the mother of Tammuz, the Babylon- 
ian and Assyrian Savior, was worshipped as a God- 
dess Mother. Tammuz was worshipped as Media- 
tor. (Monumental Christianity p. 211, and Ancient 
Faiths Vol. 11.p. 350.) 

The Etrusecans worshipped a virgin mother 
and son, she was the goddess Nutria. Jeremiah 
(625 B. C.) rebukes the Israelites for worshipping 
a Queen of Heaven. (Jer. XLIV. 16-22.) The an- 
cient Persians had their Virgin Child. Mithra was 


the Savior, the mediating and redeeming God of the | 


Persians. Many Virgin Mothers had the same 

name, and Myrrha, Maia, Maria, are the same as 

“eres (Imman’s Ancient Faiths Vol. II. p. 350, 
0). 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 31 


Usccd 8) dae be \ 


THE CROSS 


The Cross was one of the most common and 
most sacred symbols of every people in antiquity, 
and was the common property of the eastern na- 
tions, from whom it was adopted by modern na- 
tions. (The Pentateuch Explained Vol. VI: p. 1138.) 
The cross was adored in India from time -imme- 
morial, and was the symbol of the Hindu God Agni, 
the Light of the World. (Monumental Christiani- 
ty p. 14.) | 

In the cave of Elephanta, over the head of the 
figure represented as destroying the infants 
(whence the story of Herod took its origin) may be 
seen the Mitre, the Crosier and the Cross. (Baring- 
Gould: Curious Myths p. 301. Higgin’s Anac. Vol. 
I, p. 220.) The pagoda at Mathura—errected in 
form of a cross—was sacred to the memory of the 
Virgin Born and Crucified Savior Chrishna. (Ibid 
Vol. II, p. 47.) 

The Buddhists had their sacred Swatiska. The 
cross is adored by the followers of the Lama of 
Thibet. (Imman: Ancient Faiths Vol. I. p. 409— 
Higgin’s Anac. Vol. I. p. 230.) 

The Ancient Egyptians adored the Cross. Many 
of their mummies hold a cross in their hands. (Anac. 
Vol. I. p. 217). Horus, sitting on his mother’s knee 
is represented holding a cross in his hand. On the 
back of the seat a cross is shown. (Imman’s Sym- 
bolism, Lundy’s Monumental Christianity.) 

Anu, the Babylonian Deity had a cross for his 
symbol, so had Baal. (Bonnik Egyptian Belief p. 
218). The Ancient Etruscans adored the cross, 
and had monuments which show an ancient tomb 
with angels and the cross. The Ancient Greeks 
and Romans adored the cross centuries before the 
Augustan Era. 

The Early Christians did not adopt the cross 


32 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


as one of their symbols and it was not until the 5th. 
century that they did so. (Imman’s History of Our 
Lord in Art, Vol. II, p. 318.) The cross of Con- 
stantine was but the monogram of Osiris, which be- 
came afterwards that of Christ *. These two 
letters in the old Samaritan as formed on coins 
stand for 400, the second for 200. 600. It is the 
staff of Osiris. Another form of the monogram is 
** and ***, The monogram of the sun was **** 
These are now called the monograms of Christ. 
(Monumental Christianity pp. 15-29. 123-127.) The 
monogram, of Mercury was a cross. That of the 
Kigyptian Taut was formed of crosses. (Anac. Vol. 
I. p. 220.) The monogram of Saturn was a cross 
and a ram’s horn, also of Jupiter. (Celtic Druids p. 
101.) The monogram of Venus was a cross and 
circle. (Celtic Druids p. 127.) 

The I. H. S. is derived from the monogram of 
Bachus I. E. E. 8. The idea is connected with 
“Phallic Vigor.” (Ancient Faiths Vol. I. p. 518, 
519.) The cross in its different forms was adored 
as an emblem or symbol of the sun, of external life, 
of generative powers. (The Pentateuch Examined 
Vol. VI. p. 118-115.) 

The Triangle, the ren emblem of Trinity, 
is found among the Egyptians in the Obelisk and 
Pyramid, and was the type of Holy Trinity in the 
ancient Egyptian Theology. (Bonwik: Egypt. Belief 
p. 213). And just like the pagan emblem or sym- 
bol of the Good Shepherd and the Lamb were adopt- 
ed by the Christian Church, so was the emblem of 
the Fish. The Hindu Savior Vishnu was represent- 
ed as a “Dag” or fish. The fish was sacred to the 
Babylonians, Assyrians and Pheonicians, and Py- 
thagoras and his followers did not eat fish. The 
Ascetics supposed that the eating of fish tends to 
carnal desires. 

The Dove was the symbol of the Holy Spirit 
among all nations of Antiquity. Buddha is repre- 
sented with a dove above his head, so are Juno, Ast- 
arte, Cybele and Isis. | 


* KEKE 


X mh XH PPH 


Is JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 33 


THE VIRGIN BORN 


Thoth, the Egyptian God, tells the virgin, 
Queen Mautmes, that she is to give birth to a di- 
vine son, who is to be king. Thus Amon, the God 
of Thebes incarnated himself so that the maiden 
might behold him in his divine form. The God 
said: ‘“Amon-Hotep is the name of the son who is 
in thy womb. He shall grow up according to the 
words that proceed of thy mouth. He shall exercise 
sovereignity and righteousness in this land. My 
soul is in him and he shall wear the twofold crown 
of royalty, ruling the two worlds forever. (Sayce p. 
249.) Amon-Hotep ruled 1500 B. C. 

Buddha, born of a virgin, left the Paradise in 
mercy and came down to earth because he was with 
compassion for the sins and miseries of mankind. 
His incarnation was brought about by the Holy 
Ghost. 

Chrishna, born of a virgin, is the person of 
Vishnu himself, and is the darling God of the Ind- 
ian women. 

Codom, the Savior of the Siamese, was virgin 
born. The maiden being inspired from heaven, 
quitted the society of man and wandering into the 
most unfrequented parts of the great forest, was— 
while postrate in prayer—impregnated by sun- 
beams. (Squire: “Serpent Symbol” p. 185). Fo- 
Li, the founder of the Chinese Empire, was virgin 
born. When his mother conceived him, a rainbow 
(1) surrounded her. (Davis: Hist. of China Vol. I. 
p. 161). The Chinese tradition concerning his 
birth is: “Three nymphs came down from heaven 
to wash themselves in a river, but scarcely had they 





(1) Psychology of Mediumship p. 62. 


34 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


got there before the herb Lotus appeared on one of 
their garments, with its coral fruit upon it. They 
could not imagine whence it proceeded, and one was 
tempted to taste it, whereby she became pregnant 
and was delivered of a boy, who afterwards became 
a great man, a founder of religion, a conqueror and 
a legislator.” (Squire; “Serpent Symbol” p. 184). 

Las-Kium or Lao Tsze (604 B. C.) was born of 
a virgin, though he was black in complexion, but 
“marvelous and beautiful as jasper.’ His disci- 
ples were called Tien-se (heavenly doctors). He be- 
lieved in One God, “Tao’’; his followers were called 
Tao-tse, his religion “Reason”. -He came out of his 
mother’s side and existed before the birth of the 
elements in the Great Absolute. 

Yu, a Chinese Sage, was born of a virgin. 
(Progr. Rel. Ideas Vol. I. p. 104. 205). Hau-Ki a 
Chinese hero, was born of a virgin. The Shi-King 
says about his birth: “His mother being childless 
offered that she may bear children, and stepping in- 
to a footprint made by God, she became pregnant.” 
(Shi-King, Decade II, Ode 1.) Kung-Foo-Tsze 
was born in a miraculous way. Kelin, a quadruped, 
appeared and prophesied that the new born baby 
would be a king without a throne or territory. Two 
dragons hovered about the couch of his mother, 
Yen-She, and five celestial sages, or angels, entered 
at the moment of his birth, heavenly strains were 
heard in the air and harmonious chords followed 
each other, fast and full. 

Zoroaster, the Persian Lawgiver, was born of a 
virgin by a ray of Divine Reason. As soon as he 
was born the glory from his body enlightened the 
ea room. (Malcom: Hist. of Persia. Vol. I. p. 

Hercules was the son of Jove, his mother was 
Alcmene, queen of Thebes. Prometheus was a God 
who united the divine and the human nature in one 
person. Perseus was the son of Jupiter and the 
virgin Danae, daughter of Aerisius, king of Argos. 
Mercury was the son of Jupiter and Maia, daughter 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 35 


of Atlas. Apollo was the son of Jupiter and La- 
tona. Romulus, the founder of Rome, was the son 
of the virgin Rhea-Sylvia and God. Romulus ap- 
peared to Julius Proculus and ordered him to in- 
form the senate of his being called up to the assem- 
bly of the Gods under the name of Quirrnius. Caesar 
was believed to have a God for a father. Alexander 
the Great was believed to have been the son of Jupit- 
er and Olympias. | 

Cyrus of Persia was supposed to be of divine 
birth and was called “Christ”, or the ‘Anointed 
of God” and ‘‘God’s Messenger.”’ 

Plato, born at Athens 429 B. C., was believed 
to be a son of God and the virgin Perictione. (Drap- 
er: Rel. and Science p. 8) His father Aris was 
told in a dream, to respect the person of his wife un- 
til after the birth of a child of which she was preg- 
nant by God. (Hardy: Manual Budd. p. 141.—Hig- 
gin’s Anac. I. p. 618—Matt. I. v. 25.) 

Apollonius (41 B. C.) was born of a virgin, who 
was informed by a God that He Himself should be 
born of her. (Philostratus p. 5.) The mother of 
Pythagoras was impregnated by a _ spector (570 
B. C.) Her husband was informed by the God that 
his wife should bring forth a son who should be a 
benefactor to mankind. (Higgin’s Anac. Vol. I. p. 
151) Simon the Samaritan magus, was believed to 
be a God. (Eusebius Eccl. Hist. Lib. II. ch XIII). 


36 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


THE EUCHARIST 


Among the Ancient Hindus, Samo, was. the 
chief deity, he was called the “Giver of Life and of 
Health, the Protector, the Guide to Immortality.” 
He became incarnate among men, was taken by them 
and slain and brayed in a mortar; but he rose in a 
flame to heaven to be the “Benefactor to the world 
and the Mediator between God and man.” Through 
communion with him in his sacrifices, man (who 
partook of this God) has an assurance of immortali- 
ty, for by that sacrament he obtains union with his 
caer ea (Baring-Gould: Origin. Rel. Beliefs, Vol. 
I. p. 401. 

The Ancient Egyptians celebrated annually the 
resurrection of their Savior Osiris, and with it com- 
memorated his death by the Eucharist, eating the 
sacred cake after it was consecrated by the priest 
and became veritably his flesh. (Bonwick’s Egyp- 
tian Belief p. 163.) 

The Therapeutes or Essenes, who lived in large 
numbers in Egypt, also had a ceremony of the sacra- 
ment among them. (Bunsen’s Keys to St. Peter p. 
199. Higgin’s Anac. Vol. II. p. 60. Lillie’s Bud- 
dhism p. 136.) 

Pythagoras (born 570 B. C.), performed this 
ceremony of the sacrament. (Higgin’s Anac. Vol. II. 
p. 60.) The Ancient Persians, in their religion of 
Mithra, their Savior, had the nearest resemblance 
to the sacrament of the Christians. ‘(King’s Gnostics 
and their Remains p. 25. Higgins Anac. Vol. II. p. 
58, 59.) The Persian Magi introduced the worship 
of Mithra in Rome and his mysteries were solemniz- 


ed in a cave. The candidates were administered the’ 


Sacrament of Bread and Wine and they were mark- 
ed on the forehead with a cross. (Prog. Rel. Ideas 
Vol. I. p. 369.) 

Rev. Robert Taylor says in his Diegesis p. 212: 


a tt is inf 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 37 


“The Eleusinian Mysteries, or Sacrament of the 
Lord’s Supper, was the most august of all the pagan 
ceremonies celebrated, 'more especially by the Ath- 
enians, every 5th. year (in Eleusis, a town in At- 
tica, hence their name), in honor of Ceres, the god- 
dess of corn, who, in allegorical language had “‘giv- 
en us her flesh to eat’’; as Bacchus, the god of wine, 
in like sense had “given us his blood to drink”. From 
these ceremonies is derived the very name of our 
Christian sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The holy 
mysteries—not one or two, but absolutely all and 
everyone of the observances used in our Christian 
solemnity are precisely the same in form and ex- 
pression as those that appertained to the pagan 
rite.” | 


88 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


THE CRUCIFIXION 


The Doctrine of the Atonement for Sins is old- 
er than the Scriptures of the New Testament. It 
was known in the Vedic Age. We read in the Tan- 
dya-Brahmanas: “The Lord of creatures (Praya- 
pati) offered. himself a sacrifice for the God’s,” 
and in the Satapatha-Brahabana: “He who, knowing 
this, sacrifices the Purusha-Medha, or sacrifice of 
the primeval male, becomes everything.” (Monier 
Williams, p. 6-40.) Mr. Williams says (Hinduism 
p. 86): “Surely, in these mystical allusions to the 
sacrifice of a representative man, we perceive trac- 
es of the original institution of sacrifice as a di- 
vinely appointed ordinance typical of the one great 
sacrifice of the Son of God for the sins of the 
world.” 

Cicero says: ‘“The force of religion was so great 
among our ancestors that some of their commanders 
have, with their face veiled, and with the strongest 
expression of sincerity, sacrificed themselves to the 
immortal Gods to save their country. (Prog. Rel. 
Ideas Vol. I. p. 303.) 

Chrishna came upon earth and redeemed man 
by his sufferings, and is represented as hanging on 
a Cross. ne 

Buddha expired peacefully at the foot of a tree, 
however he is. described as a suffering Savior, who, 
when his mind was moved by pity for the human 
race, gave his life like grass for others. (Max 
Mueller’s Science and Religion p. 224.) Asa spirit 
of the fourth heaven he resolves to give up all that 
glory in order to be born into the world to rescue 
all men from their misery and every future conse- 
— quence of it. He vows to deliver all men, who are 
left as it were without a Savior. (Bunsen’s Angel 
Messiah p. 20.) 

Attys who was worshipped by the Phrygians, 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 39 


one of the oldest races of Asia Minor, was called 
“The Begotten Son and Savior.” (Anac, Art and My- 
thology p. 22.) He was represented as a man tied 
to a tree, at the foot of which was a Lamb. (Dupuis: 
Origin of Rel. Belief p. 225.) and as a man nailed 
to atreeor stake. lLactantius says: ‘““He was a mor- 
tal according to the flesh, wise in miraculous work, 
but being arrested by an armed force by the com- 
mand of Chaldean judges, he suffered a death made 
bitter with nails and stakes. (Lactantius Inst. Div. 
IV. ch. XIII in Anac. Vol. I. p. 544.) 

Prometheus, an immortal God and friend of the 
human race, “did not shrink even from sacrificing 
himself for their salvation, he was nailed by the 
hands and feet to mount Caucasus. (Higgin’s Anac. 
Vol. II p. 113.) | 

Rev. J. P. Lundy said: “I object to the cruci- 
fix because it is an image and liable to gross abuse, 
just as the Hindu crucifix was an idol. (Monumental 
Christianity p. 128.) 

One of our early church-fathers, Minucius Felix 
(211 A. D.) said that he resents the supposition that 
the sign of the cross should be considered exclu- 
sively as a Christian symbol: ‘‘As for the adoration 
of crosses, which you pagans object against us, 
Christians, I must tell you that we neither adore 
crosses nor desire them, you it is, ye pagans....who 
are the most likely people to adore wooden crosses 
....f£0r what else are your ensigns, flags and stand- 
ards, but crosses gilt and beautiful. Your victori- 
ous trophies not only represent a simple cross, but a 
cross with a man upon it.” (Octavius ch. XXIX.) 

Tertullian, another Christian father, wrote 
the pagans: “The origin of your gods is de- 
rived from figures moulded on a cross. All those 
rows of images on your standards are the appendag- 
es of crosses, those hangings on your standards and 
banners are robes of crosses. (Apol. ch. 16). - 

Christ was represented as a Lamb up to tha 
year 680, but during the sixth synod (canon 82) 
this was changed and the figure of a man fastened 


460 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


to a cross was ordained in stead of it. Pope Adrian 
I, confirms this. (Dupuis: Origin of Rel. Belief p. 
Monumental 


252. Higgin’s Anac. Vol. II. p. 111. 
Christianity p. 246.) 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 41 


THE ASCENSION 


Chrishna rose from death and ascended bodily 
into heaven. (Higgin’s Anac. Vol. II. p. 142, and 
Vol. I. p. 181). All men saw him and exclaimed: 
“Lo, Chrishna’s soul ascends its native skies.” 
(Prog. Rel. Ideas Vol. I. p. 72. Hist. Hindustan II. 
p. 473.) Buddah ascended bodily into heaven. 
(Higgin’s Anac. Vol. I. p. 159. Loa-Kium ascend- 
ed bodily into heaven. (Prog. Rel. Ideas Vol. I. p. 
214.) Zoroaster ascended into heaven. (Ibid p. 
258). Aesculapius rose from death. (Taylor’s Die- 
gesis p. 148.) 

Adonis or Tammuz rose from death. (Higgin’s 
Anac. Vol. II. p.114.) The feast of his resurrection 
was celebrated at Alexandria (Egypt) on March 25. 
(Dupuis: Orig. Rel. Belief p. 161. Spirit Hist. of 
Man. p. 216.) The resurrection of Adonis was cele- 
brated in India as late as the year 386 A. D. The 
idolatry of the children of Israel was the worship 
of Adonis. Dr. Parkhurst says: “I find myself 
obliged to refer to Tammuz, as well as the Greek and 
Roman Heracles, to that class of idols which origin- 
ally were designated to represent the promised Sav- 
ior, the desire of all nations. His other name Adonis 
is almost the very Hebrew word “Our Lord” a well 
known title of Christ.” (Higgin’s Anac. Vol. II. p. 
114. Taylor’s Diegesis p. 162.) 

Osiris rose from death, and Prof, Mahaffy 
states: “The resurrection and reign over an eternal 
kingdom by an incarnate mediating deity born of a 
virgin, was the theological conception which per- 
vaded the oldest Egyptian religion. (Prolegomena 
to Ancient History.) 

Bacchus rose from death and ascended to heav- 
en. (Dupuis Orig. of Rel. Belief p. 135. Higgin’s 
Anac. Vol. I. p. 322.) Hercules rose from death 
ascended into heaven in a cloud. (Prog. Rel. Ideas 


42 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 
Vol. I. p. 294. Goldzieher’s Hebrew Mythology 
DIZ 


All pagans celebrated the resurrection of their 
Savior. The early Christians though did not cele- 
brate that of Christ. The passover was their Festi- 
val, which they celebrated with the Jews on the 14, 
of Nisan and did so in memory of the Last Supper 
the disciples of Christ took with their Master. But 
later the Roman Christians believed in a tradition 
which stated that Christ died on the day of Pass- 
over, thus substituting himself for the Pashal 
Lamb, which was celebrated on the first pagan holi- 
day—Sunday after the Passover. 

The festival of the Resurrection like that of 
the Birth of Jesus are both pagan solar festivals. 
While the winter solstice festivities of the pagans, 
who at that time celebrated the beginning of the 
renewed life and activity of nature, gave us Christ- 
mas or the Birth of Christ, the pagan festival of the 
resurrection of the dead Nature in spring gave us 
our Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of Jesus. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 43 


WHEN WAS JESUS BORN? 


The whole subject is uncertain. Edwald ap- 
pears to fix the date at five years earlier than our 
era. Petavius and Usher fix it on the 25 of Dec. 
five years before our era. Bengel on the 25 of Dec. 
four years before our era. Anger and Winer four 
years before our era, in spring. Scaliger three 
years before our era on Dec. 25. Eusebius two years 
before our era, in Dec. (Rev. Dr. Geikie: Life of 
Christ Vol. I. p. 559.) | 

Basnage (Hist. of Juif.) states that the Jews 
placed his birth near a century sooner than the gen- 
eraly assumed epoch. Others have placed it even 
in the 3rd. century before our era. This belief is 
founded on a passage in the book of Wisdom (ch. 
11. v. 13-20.) written about 250 B. C., which is sup- 
posed to refer-to Jesus, and none other. In speak- 
ing of some individual who lived at that time it says: 

“....He professeth to have the knowledge of 
God, and he called himself the child of the Lord. 
He was made to reprove our thoughts. He is grieve- 
ous unto us even to behold, for his life is not like 
other men’s, his ways are of an other fashion. We 
are esteemed of him as counterfeits, he obstained 
from our ways as from filthiness, he pronounceth 
the end of the just to be blessed and maketh his 
boast that God is his father. Let us see if his words 
be true, and let us prove what shall happen in the 
end of him. For if the just man be the son of God, 
he, God, will help and deliver him from the hands of 
his enemies. Let us examine him with despiteful- 
ness and torture, that we may know his meekness 
and prove his patience, let us condemn him with a 
shameful death, for by his own saying he shall be 
respected.” 

Dr. Hookaas (Bible for Learners Vol. III. p. 
56) says: The Evangelist Luke falls into the most 


44 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


extraordinary mistakes throughout. In the first 
place, history is silent as to the census of the whole 
(roman) world ever having been made at all. In 
the next place, though Quirinius certainly did make 
such a register in Judea and Samaria, it did not ex- 
tend to Galilee, so that Joseph’s household was not 
affected by it. Besides it did not take place until 
ten years after the death of Herod, when his son 
Archelaus was deposed by the emperor, and the dist- 
ricts of Judea and Samaria were made into a Roman 
province. Under the reign of Herod nothing of the 
kind took place, nor was there any occasion for it. 
Finally, at the birth of Jesus the governor of Syria 
was not Quirinius, but Quintus Sentius Saturni- 
nus. 

The first Christians had not the least idea as © 
to when Jesus was born, and on hand of some tradi- 
tions they placed the birth at May 20, or April 19 or 
20., or January 5. However the Community at 
Rome finally fixed the Date to December 25. (Bible 
for Learners Vol. III. p. 66). In the 5th century 
it was generally agreed upon to make the date Dec- 
ember 25. The first traces of the festival of the 
Nativity are found about the time of emperor Com- 
modus A. D. 180-192. 

December 25. most all nations celebrated the 
Encouchment of the Queen of Heaven. 

In India it was a great religious festival, the 
people decorated their houses with garlands and 
made presents to friends and relatives. This cust- 
om is of very great antiquity. (Prog. Rel. Ideas. 
Vol. 8. p. 126.) In China religious solemnities are 
celebrated at the time of the Midwinter Solstice. 
(Ibid 216) Buddha was born Dec. 25. - (Lillie: 
Buddha and Buddhism p. 73) Mithras, the Persian 
Savior, was born Dec. 25. (Prog. Rel. Ideas Vol. I. 
p. 272.) Horus, of the Ancient Egyptians, was 
born Dec. 25. (Rel. of Ant. p. 214. Higgin’s Anac. 
Vol. II. p. 99). The Ancient Egyptians not only 
worshipped the Virgin Mother, they also exhibited 
the effigy of her son lying in the manger, in the 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 45 


manner the infant Jesus was afterward laid in the 
cave at Bethlehem. (Anac. Vol. II. p. 102.) 

Tertullian, Jerome and other Fathers of the 
Church, say that the ceremonies of the birthday of 
Adonis took place in a cave, that they celebrated 
dey in Bethlehem in the cave in which Jesus was 

rn. 

The Ancient Germans celebrated at this time 
their Yule-Feast. The Roman Christians, ignorant 
of the real date of the birth of Jesus, fixed the 
solemn feast to Dec. 25., the Brumalia, or Winter 
Solstice, when the Pagans annually celebrated the 
birth of the sun. (Gibbon’s Rome Vol. II. p. 383). 

The ancient festival held on Dec. 25. in honor 
of the “Invisible One” and celebrated by the “‘Great 
Games” at the circus, was afterward transfered to 
the commemoration of the birth of Jesus, the precise 
day of which many of the Church Fathers confess 
was unknown. (King’s Gnostics p. 49). 

St. Chrysostom (A. D. 390) says: “On this day, 
also, the birth of Jesus was lately fixed at Rome, in 
order that whilst the Heathen were busy with their 
profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform 
their holy rites undisturbed.” St. Gregory (3rd. 
cy.) was instrumental in changing pagan festivals 
the Religion of Christ. (Bible Myths ch. XXXIV. 


‘St. Irenaeus (A. D. 192), one of the early 
Christian Fathers, states that Jesus was born some 
twenty years before the time which has been as- 
signed, and that he was not crucified at the time 
stated in the gospels, that he lived to be nearly fifty 
years old. This knowledge Irenaeus received from 
his master Polycarp, who had it from St. John him- 
self and also from the people of Asia. 


46 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


GENERAL DISCOURSES 
I. 
It is quite evident, that were the foregoing 


stories taught in public, by far the greatest majority 
of all people who to day confess Christianity would 


- turn their back to the church and denounce the 


clergy, charging that they were for centuries wil- 
fully deceiving the world, and thus quite naturally 
very radical changes would take place in the estab- 
lished system of morals, bringing on, perhaps, an- 
tichristian uprisings followed by the most destruc- 
tive revolution the world ever experienced. 

It is true that these stories are known to the 
scholars for a rather long time and that the learn- 
ed men of modern times simply discard the ‘‘Old- 
fashioned Belief” because they not only reason 
but are well acquainted with these stories, and thus, 
while not necessarily becoming pagans or heathen, 
do to themselves and to the Truth the injustice of 
not trying to solve the apparent mystery by study- 
ing their Inner Self in a psychological way. 

It is also true that while some of these wise and 
learned men became acquainted with Mesmerism, 
Hypnotism, Telepathy, Occultism and Spiritism, it 
seems as if their researches allowed them to wander 
farther from the Truth with every step they at- 
tempted to make toward it, and so we find that 
scientifically trained minds became disturbed by 
the ‘Signs and Wonders” produced through —often 
unscrupulous—mediums, and in their honesty be- 
came the playthings of “Spooks and Jokers” of that 
world which is so closely interwoven with the world 
of man and known under the spiritistic term ‘Sum- 
merland” (and similar silly names), but which in 
its proper name signifies “Hell”; or if we wish to 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 47 


chose a less shocking term ‘Material Spiritworld,” 
(1) a world in which the mind is in some cases just 
a little better than it was while still the ruling factor 
of the human body, and in the greater number of 
cases just a little worse than it was before. 

The worst one can say of insufficient scientific 
research is that quite a number of people, who read 
such records, make themselves believe that their con- 
tents are true, because a Scientist should know what 
he is writing or talking about. The fact, however, 
thus far is that—perhaps with a few exceptions— 
such Scientists have no direct knowledge whatever, 
basing their statements only upon their experiences 
with mediums, consequently they became used to 
judge “Outside Effects rather than the actual In- 
ner Working’, arriving thus only at conclusions up- 
on which they then begin to build suppositions and 
speculations which make the readers of their works 
superstitious and ill informed. Besides this, the 
testimonials and expressions of such scientific Re- 
search Workers have made the average Occultist 
and Spiritist so cocksure of his professed wisdom 
that he finally begun to believe it himself and, point- 
ing to these scientific statements, attempts to use 
them as a matter of proof. It is, therefore, quite 
clear that the Scientist who depends upon the Phen- 
omenon produced by and through a medium without 
becoming a medium himself, sins greatly against the 
Truth and not only helps the Spiritists and Occult- 
ists to continue to fool themselves, but also to fool 
a truthseeking Public. 

The Theologians who have discarded Doctrinal 
Christianity and disclaim the ‘Garden of Eden 
Story, the Immaculate Conception Idea, the Incar- 
nation and the Divinity of Christ, etc.”, have simply 
lost their Belief due to their study of Comparative 





(1) Psychology of Mediumship p. 52, 101-119. 


48 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Religion and the Books of the Church Fathers, prov- 
ing thereby that they reason and that they have— 
at least—enough character to renounce the Author- 
ity of the Church, denying it the right to think for 
them. The Fundamentalists on the other side have, 
due to their own characteristics, not used their rea- 
soning power and many of them do not even know 
of the existence of the Rig Vedas and have not the 
least idea regarding the Church Fathers and their 
knowledge of the early days of Christianity, conse- 
quently they do not know that “A TRUTH CAN- 
NOT BE DOGMATIZED BECAUSE A TRUTH IS 
Seam T AND MANIFESTS ITSELF 
Hussy, 

Both, the Liberals and the Fundamentalists, 
make the mistake of rejecting the Phenomenon as 
the basis from which to build up the evidence for or 
against established Beliefs, hence both fall into the 
same error as the Pharisees in their spiritual blind- 
ness, and sound as well as unsound reasoning often 
has the same results. 

To the average mind the quotations used must. 
be alarming, yet as we proceed this condition will 
change, although we are not promising a direct re- 
lief of all doubts because afterall the Truth must be 
experienced before it can become evident and to 
make that experience is up to each, individually. 

Thinking of God we enter that Realm of 
Thought which seems to take us far away from our 
own self. It seems that we become lost in a laby- 
rinth of ideas, and it seems as if not one of the con- 
glomeration of ideas will suit us fully, as if each 
idea would have to be corrected or supplemented 
by an other idea, coming thus gradually to the con- 
clusion that God is just what one wants God to be, 
solving, with this conclusion, the riddle presented 
in all worships from times immemorial to the pre- 
sent age. Reasoning thus we feel that we are cor- 
rect, and looking through the Philosophy of History 
we become convinced that we are. Even so, we have 
arrived nowhere because the question: “What is 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 49 


God?” remains still unanswered, for there seems to 
be something lacking in the Universal Harmony of 
Thought what God Is. 

If God is, then God must manifest Itself, for 
anything that is manifests itself someway, although 
we may not yet be aware of the manifestation. It 
is said: “God manifests in Nature,” but Nature is 
Matter and God is Spirit. In both cases we have a 
Hypothesis as long we are unable to understand 
Nature and Spirit, for Nature, while concrete to us 
in many ways, is also abstract in many ways, while 
Spirit remains incomprehensible even as a term. 

Developing the idea that Nature and God are 
One, are “inseparable,” we at once have in Genesis 
Chapter I. a human conception of the Creation by 
Nature—‘“Elohim’’, and in Chapter II. a human con- 
ception of the Creation by Spirit—‘Jehovah”, and 
we fall into the temptation to disbelieve both ideas 
because of the Disagreement between them as well 
as because our own reasoning is against the ideas 
described. 

Spirit being outside the Realm, of Human Com- 
prehension cannot be defined, yet admitting its ex- 
istence because there seems to be Something trying 
to prove this existence, we seem to come to the con- 
clusion that while Matter and Spirit appear to be in- 
separable, they are not One, that Spirit penetrating 
Matter (Nature), animates it only to the extent of 
its receptivity. 

God must be Intelligence, therefore Intelligence 
must be the Image of God. Thus Knowledge, Un- 
derstanding or Comprehension are either the Image 
of Elohim or of Jehovah, respectively are either 
“Natural or Supernal.” God being Intelligence, 
must then be “Supernal Intelligence,” consequently 
far removed from the natural intelligence of man, 
yet interwoven with it, for there seems to be Some- 
thing which attempts to manifest this fact; but since 
the result of that manifestation appears to depend 
entirely upon the receptivity of the matter involved, 
the Supernal Intelligence reaches man only by 


50 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


degrees, therefore God can be almighty only where 
the proper condition of receptivity exists. 

It is impossible to define God, neither it is pos- 
sible to define Spirit; but no sooner do we begin to 
reason then we involuntarily admit that if God ex- 
ists, God must be this which man is not. 

Taking Christ’s expression: ‘‘God is a Spirit” 
and the consequences following His statement, we 
. cannot help feeling that the Old Ideas must tumble 
before it, because it at once opens New Channels of 
Thought which lead us back to Man, for Man now 
suddenly appears as a New Being, a Being with a 
Supernal Purpose. Thus to find God we first must 
find Man, for it is Man (Matter) through which 
God, the Essence or Spirit of God, manifests to the 
degree of man’s mental receptivity. 

The “Kingdom of Heaven is therefore within 
man to the degree of his receptivity,’ which makes 
man the Son of God by degrees. This was known 
to the Ancients, although they appear to have miss- 
ed the Supernal Degree, and knowing only the Na- 
tural Phenomenon, misapplied their knowledge, 
thereby producing (unwittingly) false doctrines, 
hence false beliefs. 

The Natural and Supernal, being closely inter- 
woven, resemble each other in degrees, hence the 
Natural Phenomenon contains also Sublimity; but 
since this Sublimity is produced by Natural Experi- 
ences only, it must of necessity evolve only Morals 
or Ethics and thus remain natural. As such it is 
but a Shadow of the Supernal which evolves SPIR- 
ITUALITY and leads outward, away from the 
things that are natural (material). 

The manifestation of God can be mental only, 
for the mind, respectively the brain, is the only ap- 
paratus which can receive and work with vibratory 
influences from without, and it is this apparatus 
through which the soul proper can be reached and 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 51 


evolved. The brains are therefore the “Jacob’s 
Ladder” (1), but since they cannot come into con- 
tact with pure ethereal vibrations while in their 
natural state (animal-like state), the Essence or 
Spirit of God is not able to manifest to them and so 
the brain of the natural man is receptive only to 
natural (cosmic) vibrations, being in his natural 
state a part of them. Nevertheless by Evolution 
of Conduct man’s brain has inherited a sensitive- 
ness for the Higher, for the Spiritual, and it is this 
inherited sensitiveness which produces in man the 
Belief in a Higher Force, a Supreme Being, for man 
has moments of concentration during which his 
brains produce the condition necessary for the pur- 
pose of receiving ethereal waves. 

Natural Knowledge is simply required by the 
study of the things that are natural, (cosmic) it is 
a clear perception of facts regarding man’s own 
specific natural interests; while Supernal Know- 
ledge is the result of the study of man’s Inner Self 
in regard to the “Vibratory Influences” working 
around about him. Since this study involves the 
study of matter also, one arrives at a clear percep- 
tion of the Truth only after one is able to discern be- 
tween the cosmic and the ethereal waves and after 
one can disperse the lower (cosmic) vibrations and 
attract and follow the higher ethereal vibrations. 
It should then be clear that God is omnipotent only 
where ethereal vibrations can work, hence it should 
je clear that the natural man cannot perceive the 
manifestation of the Essence of God without creat- 
ing the mood of receptivity for it. 

Studying the various manifestations one finds 
that almost all reflect material things, things of the 
earth earthly, hence if we become acquainted with 
the laws of vibrations we will find that these kind 
of manifestations are material, are cosmic, because 


(1) Genesis XXVIII. 12. 


62 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


of the fact that the minds which produce them be- 
long still to the earth proper, although they may 
promulgate sublime ideas ; yet even in them one must 
perceive the ‘Manifestation of the Spirit per se” 
(1) because they are—strictly speaking—the Fund- 
amentals for the Understanding of the Higher 
Things, but unfortunately they are only too often 
mistaken for them and thus the Clear Perception of 
the Supernal Truth was at all times clouded, adult- 
erated, scoffed at and discarded. 

In our opinion it is not essential to know when 
Jesus of Nazareth was born, we however do believe 
that St. Irenaeus (p. 45) comes closer to the Truth 
than do the critics of later years. It is not the 
date of his birth that matters, but it is the answer 
to the question: ‘Is Incarnation possible? (2)” 

Orthodoxy, looking at things from a material- 
spiritual viewpoint, takes for granted that God is 
a Person, a Man who, dividing himself in three parts 
—as it were—is: “God Father, God the Son and God 
the Holy Ghost”, and still be One Person. Since 
nobody seems to be able to understand how this can 
be, Orthodoxy proclaims it to be a “Holy Mystery” 
and therewith settles all arguments. 

When Christ said: “God is a Spirit,”’ He did not 
say that God is a person, aman. Would God bea 
man, a person, Christ had not used the term “Spirit’’. 
Spirit is beyond man’s comprehension and Christ 
was fully aware of this because He made no attempt - 
to define it. Now while it is true that the term 
Spirit is used often in the Scriptures, in most all 
cases it denotes ‘Soul’, meaning the Spiritual Prin- 
ciples in Man, or where it refers to God it has re- 
ference to the “Essence of God” (Holy Spirit) ; then 
again this term—like the term Angel—is applied 


Ee 


(1) If. Tim. If. 20-21. I Cor. XII. 11. 
(2) Psych. of Mediumship p. 84. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 63 


when refering to those who, having passed out of 
their body, manifest among ‘men. 

It is an erroneous conception that manis a 
Spirit, because man consists of Anima (‘Animal 
Soul,) Soul (Spiritual Principle) and Body. If 
man were a Spirit he could not be matter, because 
we know that the vibrations of an Angel burn up 
matter, consequently it should stand to reason that 
the vibrations. of a Spirit must be even more de- 
structive to matter. Man can become a “Spirit- 
ualized Being’, but never a Spirit. (1). 

The study of the Psychology of Mediumship 
proves this beyond a doubt, because we find that all 
Discarnate Egos burn up matter (2) also and that 
their vibratory force is much greater than that of 
man, consequently man must—while learning the 
laws of vibration—become gradually accustomed 
to the vibratory forces around him: before he can 
come into contact with Discarnate Egos. Such a 
period is called a “Period of Preparation.” 

Man is the Image of God only as far as the 
Spiritual Principle is concerned and the proper evo- 
lution of this Principle makes man the Son of God. 
Hosea already knew this: “....Ye are the Sons of 
the Living God.” (Hos. I. 10) St. John says: ‘But 
as many as received Him to them gave He power to 
become the Sons of God, even to them that believe on 
His name.” (John 1.12.) In I. John III. 1-2. he 
says: “We should be called the Sons of God, Now are 
we the Sons of God.” St. Paul states in Rom. VIII. 
14: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, 
they are the Sons of God,” and in Phil. II. 15, he 
says: “That ye may be blameless and harmless the 
Sons of God.” 

If then the First Christians (according to 
Eusebius) and the Apostles believed that “Jesus was 
a man like other men and could be equalled and in 


(12) Psychology of Mediumship p. 58. 


54 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


some respects excelled ” (p. 11), the reference by St. 
Paul in the Galatians Ch. IV. v. 18.; “God sent forth 
His son, made of woman under the law....” gives 
us the key to their idea, which was that Jesus was 
born like other men under the laws of nature, and 
since they knew that “all who are led by the Spirit 
of God are the Sons of God’, a doctrine as promul- 
gated later could not be acceptable to them. 

There can be no question at all that they fully 
understood the meaning of “being led by the spirit » 
of God’, which in modern interpretation means “to 
have a Spiritual Guidance’’, to have made a contact 
with a Discarnate Ego, to have become a “Spiritual 
Medium, a Psychic,” through which the Word of 
God is being taught to man, for Jesus himself is re- 
. ported to have said: “....Itis not ye that speak, but 
the Spirit of your Father (spiritual guidance which 
called you back into spiritual existence) which 
speaketh in you.” (Matt. X. 20) Understanding 
this, naturally there was between them no necessity 
of material explanations of the contact, for the con- 
tact itself was no longer a mystery to them, there- 
fore, while they had and firmly believed in a Spirit- 
ual Mediumship, hence comprehended the Spiritual 
Issue in Jesus. they—to all appearances— did not 
fully understand the “Spiritual Issue in Christ,” 
hence they came later in conflict with Paul, who as 
the Apostle of Jesus had the correct perception of 
the Truth, although one can clearly perceive that 
many alterations must have been made later in his 
writings by the compilers and translators of the 
New Testament. This must become clear when we 
read the verse ascribed to him: “For the truth of 
God hath more abounded through MY LIE UNTO 
HIS GLORY; why yet am I also judged as a sin- 
ner ?” (Rom. Hi) 7.) 

It is not possible to enter a historic controversy 
in regard to the subject at hand, nor is it possible to 
prove the Truth by quoting Scriptural Texts, be- 
cause even if Orthodoxy claim these texts genuine, 
there must arise grave doubts due not only to the 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 55 


Church Fathers own testimonials, but also on ac- 
count of the profound similarity between them and 
other apparent more or less authentic records of 
Antiquity, consequently we must handle the subject 
entirely from a Psychic Point of Experience and 
base our arguments upon present day experiences 
and studies of the Phenomenon, thereby either prov- 
ing or disproving the stories contained in the Scrip- 
tures as well as those contained in the socalled Sac- 
red Writings-of Antiquity. We are, therefore, fully 
aware that neither the Materialists nor the Ortho- 
dox Clergy will be able to follow us, because neither 
has the least desire to honestly study the Pheno- 
menon, but then we are not here to argue with those 
who ‘‘know all” or wish to be ignorant, for our work 
is with the Truthseeker. 
It may perhaps, appear peculiar that neither 
Mark nor John relates anything in regard to the 
birth of Jesus, Mark being accepted as the scholar 
of Peter, from. whom he is supposed to have receiv- 
ed the knowledge of the things he records; while 
John, who was first a disciple of John the Baptist, 
was one of the earliest followers of Jesus, and his 
beloved disciple. It would naturally appear im- 
portant that Peter—who was also very close to 
Jesus—would have given Mark all the details known 
to him in regard to the parentage and childhood of 
Jesus, details which must have been important 
enough for Mark to record. Besides this, it is said 
that the Apostles frequently assembled in his moth- 
er’s house in Jerusalem, which would allow one to 
surmise that Mark—having such a close contact 
with them—must have been fully acquainted with 
the facts regarding the family of Joseph and Mary, 
yet he mentions nothing of it. St. John, being the 
beloved disciple and under the instruction of Jesus, 
the one who was to take his (Jesus’) place in his 
mother’s heart, must be logically the one, and per- 
haps the only one, who had the most intimate re- 
lationship with the family and therefore he can 
safely be pointed out as being the chief authority in 


56 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


regard to these affairs, yet he mentions nothing of 
the things Matthew and Luke report of the birth 
and childhood of Jesus. It is, of course, true that 
one may surmise each writer reported the things 
most important to him, as well as for the purpose 
of his writings and how. it was possible that all 
differed in many ways, and why many of the hund- 
reds of gospelwriters differed in the chief issue, 
namely in the Divinity of Christ, including his real 
mission of the ‘“‘Better Resurrection,” for while 
they all must have had a common basis, each of them 
may have easily differed in regard to clear percep- 
tion, due to their own mental and geographic en- 
vironment as well as to their own particular experi- 
ences in things of the Spirit, Spirit Manifestations 
being nothing new in those days. 

Taking the reports of Matthew and Luke in re- 
ference to the birth of Jesus one finds that while 
Matthew is rather short in his narrative, Luke is 
rather lengthy, giving a complete dialogue between 
persons in the body and angels. From a psychic 
point of view we, of course, differ with the gospel 
writers, or perhaps rather with their translators, 
for we do know by experience and study that no 
human being can come into contact with an angel, 
hence we are compelled to use the expression ‘‘Dis- 
carnate Ego’, respectively “Spiritualized Being’’, 
which also can be interprpeted with ‘Spiritual Guid- 
ance” or ‘‘Messenger of God’. Both Matthew and 
Luke, claim that Joseph, Mary and Elizabeth and 
Zacharias conversed with such messengers or guid- 
ances, therefore, it cannot be denied that they had 
made a contact with the Other World, hence in their 
particular case were “Spiritual Mediums,” a people 
through whom the Essence of God could manifest. 
It becomes clear also that both, Matthew and Luke, 
in writing these accounts believed that those for 
whose benefit they were written are acquainted 
with the Phenomenon, hence could readily under- 
stand the issue, for it seems not plausible that either 
would care to report such to anyone not familiar 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 57 


with it; but since neither of them attempted to 
write a textbook on the Phenomena it is also clear 
that these records will appear phantastic to all who 
are not acquainted with the Phenomena. 

Now, while it is reasonable to believe that these 
records were first transmitted orally and put into 
writing later, personal opinions may have easily 
crept into them, while still later actual interpola- 
tions became an ecclesiastic-political necessity for 
the purpose of creating a Hiearchy and this can be 
seen when studying the Church Fathers. Never- 
theless, the Phenomenon, lending itself to investiga- 
tion, must either prove or disprove these narratives. 


Matthew says: “Now the birth of Jesus 
Christ was on this wise: 
When as his mother Mary was espoused to 
Joseph, before they came together, she was 
found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then 
Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not 
willing to make her a public example, was mind- 
ed to put her away privately. But while he 
thought on these things, behold, the angel of the 
Lord appeared unto him in a dream saying, 
Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take un- 
to thee Mary thy wife: for that which is con- 
ceived in her is of the Holy Ghost....” (Matt. 
I. 18-20.) 


There can be no doubt that in some quarters at 
the time when this was written, or when this gospel 
was compiled, such an idea prevailed, but whether 
or not the people who promulgated the idea knew 
what the “Holy Ghost” is, remains a matter of con- 
jecture; yet one may surmise that the term “Holy 
Ghost” may in their interpretation have signified 
something vastly different from the present day 
theological viewpoint, that they meant the child was 
conceived “in the Spirit that is Holy’ (begotten of 
the Holy Spirit,) consequently Joseph was recog- 
nized by them as the natural father of Jesus, which 


f 
58 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


would prove the idea “he wanted to do away with 
her privately” an interpolation of later years, and 
this appears quite certain to all who study the 
Church Fathers, and such is fully in harmony with 
the statement made by Pope Leo X. (p. 12.) 

Clear reasoning will prove that there is some- 
thing fundamentally wrong with this account, for 
how did Joseph know that Mary’s pregnancy was 
caused by the Holy Ghost ?—The text states that he 
was not informed about this before he had thought 
to put her away; and if he knew it was the Holy 
Ghost that was responsible, why then did he want to 
put her away ?— 

Since the Early Christians (according to Euse- 
bius) recognized the fact that Jesus was born like 
other men, of Mary and Joseph, and since Paul 
preached the same idea (Gal. IV. 18), our version 
that ‘Jesus was conceived in the Spirit that is Holy” 
proves itself correct, and the last verse of the first 
chapter of Matthew proves—at least to us—that 
both Mary and Joseph were fully aware of it. 

For reasons of his own, Matthew gives no ac- 
count of the things which happened before, very 
likely taking for granted that those to whom he con- 
veyed his narrative were acquainted with it, but the 
chances are that he knew nothing about these hap- 
penings, hence we must continue in Luke. 


Luke says:“....The angel Gabriel was sent 
from God ....to a virgin espoused to a man 
whose name was Joseph....and the virgin’s 


name was Mary. And the angel came in unto 
her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favour- 
ed, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou 
among women. And when she saw him, she 
was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind 
what manner of salutation this should be. And 
the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary; for 
thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, 
thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring 
forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 59 


shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the 
Highest; and the Lord God shall give him the 
throne of his father David....Then said Mary 
unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know 
nota man? And the angel answered and said 
unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee: Therefore also that holy thing which 
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of 
God. (Luke I. 26-35.) 


The name ‘‘Gabriel” is symbolic and means 
“Man of God’. He enters the Jewish accounts the 
first time in the book of Daniel (ch. VIII. IX) Ac- 
cording to the Rabbins he is the “Angel of Death” 
in whose care the souls of the. Israelites are intrust- 
ed. The Talmud describes him as the “Prince of 
Fire.” The Mohammedans hold Gabriel even in 
greater reverence than the Jews and call him the 
“Spirit of Truth,” believing that he dictated the 
Koran to Mohammed. (Chamber’s Enc.) 

There is no where in the Scriptures a definite 
idea given in regard to angels, the idea conveying 
itself in a rather sudden and speculative way, car- 
rying within but a vague apprehension of the “Thing 
That Is,” and drawing—it seems—strongly from the 
Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian and even more so 
from the Persian concepts but never coming to a 
better understanding of it, always falling into awe- 
inspiring superstition, thereby missing the Truth 
which in such a simple way expresses itself in the 
experience of the Phenomenon and testifies the 
Truth in the expression ‘appearance of man” as 
found in Ezekiel I. 18; Daniel VIII. 16; Mark XVI. 
5; Luke XXIV. 4; Acts I. 10-X. 30, and in Rev. 1. 13. 


60 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


tt, 


It seems as if man, unable to comprehend the 
Administration of God, must seek its agencies in the 
socalled Supernatural, must invent somekind of mir- 
aculous channels through which the Administrative 
Force of God should manifest itself, consequently 
formulates Beliefs which in all respects are con- 
trary to the laws of nature and out of harmony with 
the divine laws. The difference of interpreting the 
Phenomenon is therefore due only to the misappre- 
hension of its expounders, and it should be quite 
clear that even the disciples of Jesus as well as the 
apostles could not help differing one from the other 
in regard to its explanation, for, while they all made 
their experiences alike, they were mentally not alike, 
and thus each of them had of necessity his own parti- 
cular viewpoint; but they were all in accordance in 
regard to the fundamentals of their experiences, 
and one in Jesus-Christ. 

The Spirit of God manifested at all times the 
same way, so did the soul of man. Thus then was 
from times immemorial man confronted with 
the Great Duality of Life, which in the Dual Phen- 
omenon manifested that Something which even to- 
day is but little understood, for man—while greatly 
developed mentally—has had but little time to study 
himself, and thus as of old, remained contented with 
Ideas and Beliefs held sacred by his fathers, or be- 
coming dissatisfied with them, rejected them be- 
cause he learned to know that other, older nations, 
reported similar Ideas and Beliefs in their sacred 
writings, making himself believe that Christianity 
is of socalled pagan origin and the story of Jesus 
of Nazareth a pious fraud. 

No matter how much we seek in Antiquity for 
the Truth, we always note the great similiarity of 
Belief, yet all Beliefs are born of a fundamental 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 61 


basis, namely in. “Death”, for Death brings forth 
Life, and Life manifests itself in an natural and 
supernal way. 

Leaving--for argumentative purposes--God out, 
it would stand to reason that if death is but a tran- 
sitory stage of life, an After-Life therefore exists as 
exists as a matter of natural consequence under the 
law of nature. This After-Life would be to no pur- 
pose if it would not have within itself ‘‘Advance- 
ment” (Spiritual Evolution). It would also stand 
to reason that the condition of this After-Life would 
be quite different from that of the earthlife proper, 
which seems to prove itself correct in as much this 
After-Life seems to be neither seen nor felt by the 
natural man; yet assuming its existence, it would 
also seem plausible that, no matter what its condi- 
tion may be, man could in this new condition be 
nothing else but man, even if we assume him to 
manifest or exist in that new life in a different 
form or body. Assuming this, it would then become 
clear that no matter what man was, mentally, before 
death, he would be the same mental unit after death. 
We would then be forced to assume further that this 
After-Life is peopled with the same characters by 
which the earth is populated, because death would 
have transplanted these characters, consequently 
this After-Life would have within itself also ‘“Degen- 
eration” as well as the “Follies and Wisdom” of the 
earth earthy. (Psychology of Mediumship p. 64.) 

Assuming now that under certain laws of na- 
ture those living in this Other World can manifest 
their existence to man upon earth, the same laws 
would allow man to come into contact with them. 
Assuming that this is so, it would be reasonable to 
believe that such contacts would enable man to learn 
not only of the conditions of this After-Life, but 
also that man in the body could learn from the— 
perhaps more advanced—man out of the body, and it 
would then be equally reasonable to believe that the 
knowledge thus received by man upon earth would 
be either in regard to things relating to the earth- 


62 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


life, or pertaining to the higher mental advance- 
ment of the—let us say—Spiritual Self. 

Assuming that such knowledge can be received, 
it would be clear that its result would chiefly depend 
upon man’s various desires as well as upon his abili- 
ty to learn to understand the laws, that therefore 
the Truth about the After-Life could not be received 
by all men in the same degree, that this Truth would 
perhaps through thousands of years come to man 
only in a fragmentary way, repeating itself almost 
constantly from century to century, but—because 
of man’s inability to comprehend it and to live in 
harmony with it—even these fragments of the Truth 
could and would be adulterated and misinterpreted 
by those who received them. Since this After-Life 
would—as a ‘matter of necessity—be composed of 
various conditions, of Regeneration (natural and 
supernal,) and Degeneration, a diversity of know- 
ledge would have to exist there, consequently 
one would have to learn to discern the knowledge re- 
ceived, dividing it into “Natural and Supernal 
Knowledge’ of which the former would quite natur- 
ally contain “Sublimity and Subtlety.” 

Let us assume further that under the laws of 
nature both, man in the body and man out of the 
body, made a contact one with the other, that such 
happened in the earliest stages of the Human Race 
and continued thus to the present day the world 
over, it would become very clear that the entire Hu- 
man Race would have received fragments of the 
Truth at all times, that these fragments would—of 
— necessity—have been alike in the fundamentals, but 
crude in the beginning because of man’s crude men- 
tal condition, becoming more and more advanced in 
Sublimity as well as in Subtlety in accordance with 
man’s own mental evolution, and in parts Supernal 
where ever a human mind was able to perceive the 
difference and live in harmony with it. Would it not 
stand to reason that thus the various religious con- 
ceptions came into existence, all of which are based 
upon misunderstanding and misinterpreting the 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 63 


Phenomenon even there where in reality a Supernal 
Truth was received in a fragmentary way? 

The Supernal as well as the Natural manifested 
itself at all times, but the Supernal lost itself more 
readily among men than the Natural, because man, 
being in the natural condition, cannot so easily com- 
prehend the Supernal and, if religiously inclined, 
always looks for ‘‘Miraculous Manifestations of the 
Supernal” while the Spirit per se manifests itself 
through the most natural channels, always using 
the way offering the least resistance. 

If the Phenomenon is true (and we know that is 
true), the Wisdom of Asia with all its Buddhas and 
“Masters” is of no value to the Truthseeker, nor will 
it matter whether or not some accounts of the earl- 
ier fragmentary Sublimity entered the Old and New 
Testament, because the present day Phenomena, 
when studied thoroughly, brings out the CON- 
CRETE TRUTH of the RESURRECTION to CON- 
DEMNATION and the BETTER RESURREC- 
TION. This truth will absolutely destroy the Wis- 
dom of the Eastern Philosophies as well as Modern 
Materialism, and naturally—opening the mental 
eyes of man—it will destroy Dogmatic Theology. 

Knowing that the Phenomenon is true, and un- 
derstanding the ways of the manifestation, we need 
no longer worry about the various manifestations 
of the Disembodied and Discarnate Egos of the Pre- 
Christian Era, nor is it necessary for us to feel dis- 
turbed over the increasing Disbelief in the silly ma- 
terial explanations of the Scriptural Texts, for our 
knowledge is based upon the very existence after 
socalled Death which the Clergy claim—while true— 
does not manifest, declaring such manifestations to 
be delusions produced by “Satan”, although they 
should know that the Pharisees said the same thing 
to Jesus. 

The Asiatic Occultism with its various forms of 
modern doctrines so eagerly believed in by Western 
Minds, becomes a complete fiasco when confronted 
with the true phenomenon, for the true Phenomenon 


64 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


proves to the sincere investigator that Re-Incarna- 
tion is but a “Possession of a Human Organism to 
which the Possessing Ego has NO Right whatever,” 
having in the majority of cases seduced a human 
mind which was willing to be seduced and enslaved 
for services rendered. The Re-Incarnationists, no 
matter how wise they may think themselves to be, 
most certainly have never studied the Phenomenon 
of Mediumship nor become Mediums themselves, for 
if they had, they could not be Believers in the Vari- 
ous Hindu Ideas, unless they have lost all reason 
or else attempt to stifle their conscience. 

If Jesus received his knowledge from India, if 
he was in India to be taught the ‘‘Wisdom Religion,” 
it must seem extremely peculiar to say the least that 
no Buddha, not even Chrishna, taught the results 
of the Better Resurrection, and it is very peculiar, 
indeed, that Jesus did NOT teach Re-Incarnation, 
but instead warned against a life which must lead 
to it, calling it the RESURRECTION TO CON- 
DEMNATION. These Fundamentals were force- 
fully taught by Paul and the Apostles. 

Western Hinduism, seeing in John the Baptist 
a Reincarnation of Elias, shows not only ignorance 
of the psychic laws, but also Eastern arrogance, and 
attempting to unite Spiritism with Theosophy makes 
the blunder to prove a misconception with a delu- 
sion, proving that it has not the slightest comprehen- 
sion of this which is called “Re-Incarnation” and 
that which is known by the term “Incarnation.” 

To re-incarnate means to “again live in the 
flesh, to again have a material body and to live in 
that body under the laws of nature.” It includes 
the supposition that all people who live to day have 
lived thousands of years ago and have—of necessity 
—re-incarnated for better or worse, and to continue 
to do so, although they cannot remember anything 
about their former earthlife, nor will they remember 
about their present life in their next re-incarnation. 
Re-incarnation means that minds like Socrates, 
Plato, Xerxes and other souls of Antiquity are to 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 65 


day lecturing in English through American medi- 
ums, who in most cases are of a rather inferior ment- 
ality. True, this sort of Re-incarnation Idea is but 
of recent date and accepted only by some of the 
Theosophists who believe that such “Spiritistic Im- 
personations” serve their occult misconceptions. 

The Re-Incarnationist cannot understand that 
the Soul, both, material (anima) and spiritual, are 
produced by the generative force and are a matter 
of evolution of material and spiritual conduct. Un- 
able to comprehend this, they, like the Hindus, see 
in Life only a ‘‘natural purpose,” and for this reason 
they require a body, a body of flesh and blood, to 
further evolve after death upon earth, or—as a pun- 
ishment for misconduct or sins committed in a for- 
mer reincarnation—their next bodily environment 
will be worse or lower than it was during their pre- 
vious earthlife, suffering thus for sins of which 
they have no recollection. 

We are not disputing the existence of Re-In- 
carnation, for it exists, but not as the Hindus claim 
it. The Phenomenon as it presents itself in all 
Spiritistic and occultistic mediumships brings this 
fact out clearly. 

Incarnation has nothing whatever in common 
with Re-Incarnation, for it is not connected with the 
Animal Braincenter (Medulla Oblongata), centering 
in the Cerebellum (Spiritual Braincenter), and dif- 
fers greatly from that form of Re-Incarnation which 
centers chiefly in the Cerebrum, producing Material 
Sublimity, but is still very much governed by carnal 
things although it advises against it. Its chief ob- 
ject is and remains with the body and its natural 
functions, representing life as such exists upon the 
earth and in the Material Spiritworld, therefore this 
particular form of Re-Incarnation is produced too 
by a contact with the Animal Brain. 

Since these reincarnations act to a certain de- 
gree like Incarnation, producing similar mental dis- 


66 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


turbances in their early stages, they were always 
confounded with Incarnation. | 

If the Phenomenon is true then its manifesta- 
tion through a human organism must lend itself to 
investigation, but the difficulties which seem to ex- 
ists are such only because the investigator can judge 
only effects and cannot thoroughly make himself ac- 
quainted with the causes, hence no matter how far 
such investigations may go, their result must—in 
the main be always more or less a conjecture, or in 
the best but a small part of the Truth, which in many 
cases must lead the investigator into false judg- 
ments. Quite different it would be if an honest 
scientific investigator would go through the various 
developments himself, asking for the Truth and 
Nothing but the Truth. Such an investigator could 
study the causes and their effects and, coming into 
contact with better developed minds of that Other 
World, he would soon learn to understand the Causes 
and their Effects upon the human mind, learning 
thus to discern between the Natural and the Super- 
nal Manifestations. This would soon open his mind to 
the apparent mystery of Incarnation, consequently 
he would also have learned to understand why Re- 
Incarnation exists and why it constitutes “Psycho 
Prostitution.” (Psychology of Mediumship p. 84.) 

It is quite clear to us that these things are not 
only abstract, but also absurd to most Thinkers, 
hence we are fully aware that no one will be able 
to benefit by our explanations unless he cares to in- 
vestigate our claims and, in our opinion, every one 
should be interested enough in this subject to want 
to know whether or not it is so. From a religious 
or theologic point of view these claims should be of 
the utmost importance, not only because they sub- 
stantiate all Scriptural Phenomena, but more so 
because they throw a new light on the most prob- 
lematic subjects with which Theology at all times 
was confronted and to day so severely seems to 
wrangle. . 

Reading the Scriptural Texts, those who reason 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 67 


cannot help asking: ‘‘Why is it there appears a dif- 
ference of opinion between the various writers? It 
seems but logical that if these writers were inspired 
by God, if God or the Angels (messengers) of God 
told these writers what to write, there would be a 
better harmony throughout the Scriptures. 

We must first learn to understand that the 
manifestations recorded were but in the beginning 
a private or family affair, that the people concerned 
—hbeing used to manifestations—were not any long- 
er subjected to the desire to tell every body of their 
experiences, but, visiting each other (1), talked 
these matters over among themselves. and since 
those who believed in the manifestations of the 
Spirit were later prosecuted and forced to meet se- 
cretly, it should stand to reason that they orally 
transmitted, for perhaps many years, the things told 
them by eyewitnesses, and interwove their own ex- 
periences with those handed down. There can be no 
question that among tnem gradually ‘outsiders’ 
(people interested in manifestations) were found, 
who had already had similar experiences, for we 
must not forget that the Alexandrian Doctrines 
were well known throughout Palestine, that thus lat- 
er it became possible to have the Actual Truth eith- 
er despoiled with pre-existing ideas, or made fit to 
serve whatever the respective writer wished. Furth- 
ermore a record in itself not necessarily makes true 
the things recorded, and a number of people wit- 
nessing the. same thing differ—often greatly—in 
their description of it, their differentiating being 
due to their different mentality, and so, speaking of 
“Inspiration”, it should be elear that its results 
would differ in accordance with the mentality of the 
one inspired, although each who became receptive 
would have received fundamentally the same ideas, 
differing from the other in expression or interpreta- 


(1) Luke I. 39-56. 


68 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


tion, or in beth, yet agreeing in the fundamentals 
which always remain the same. This condition nec- 
essarily had to create different schools, each school 
formulating its own specific doctrines. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON. OF GOD? 69 


INSPIRATION 


The question: ‘‘What is Inspiration?’ must 
therefore be answered before we can, even in a small 
way, comprehend the difficulties involved. 

a Inspiration” (literally, breathing into) 1s ap- 
plied in theology to denote the action of the divine 
mind upon the human mind, whereby the latter is 
both supernaturally informed and qualified to com- 
municate the information received. The term re- 
velation is used more distinctly to express the first 
part of this action, and inspiration to express the 
second part. But, in truth, all inspiration, as the ~ 
word itself bears, implies revelation... The prophet 
or apostle is inspired only as the utterer of know- 
ledge beyond the ordinary reach of human intelli- 
gence. 

“The inspiration of the Scriptures signifies a 
supernatural qualification or special divine authori- 
ty in the books of Scripture as depositories of truth. 
When the theologian asserts any book of the Bible to 
be inspired, he means that it possesses an authority 
different from any other book, that it contains truth 
not merely as any ordinary book may do, but by a 
special divine impress. . All orthodox theologians 
may be said to agree in ascribing this special divine 
character to Holy Scripture; but further there is 
no agreement. The mode of inspiration, the degree 
and extent of it, are all subject to dispute..... The 
advocates of plenary inspiration contend that the 
whole letter of Scripture is inspired, that its words 
were immediately dictated by the Holy Spirit, and 
are literally the words of God, and not ef man. The 
several writers of Scripture were nothing more than 
penmen of the Divine Spirit, under whose control 
they vibrated as the strings of a harp in the hands of 
an artist. They were as a piece of mechanism 
touched by God himself. Those who maintain this 


70 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


theory, speak, indeed, of the individuality and di- 
verse characteristics of the writers of the Script- 
ures, but only as one would speak of the different 
tones which the same artist would produce from one 
and the same musical instrument. ‘The differences 
are not so much in the moral or intellectual indi- 
viduality of the writers themselves, as in the diverse 
aims and uses with which the Holy Spirit employs 
them; for, according to this theory, the Divine is 
all in Scripture, and the human intelligence its mere 
vehicle or passive instrument.. ..It follows from 
the same theory, that Inspiration is essentially in- 
termitting. It is not a higher quality of any soul, 
but a divine afflatus, seizing the soul at certain mo. 
ments, and abandoning it at others (1). 

“M. de Pressense, one of the most distinguished 
of the French Protestant divines belonging to the 
evangelical school of theology says: the Bible is a 
mass of documents of varying age and varying au- 
thenticity ; its text has undergone the usual changes 
attending the transmission of historical documents; 
it is marked by the usual inequalities and varieties 
of style that we meet with in any other collection 
of ancient literature; it presents in many cases pe- 
culiar difficulties, differences and even contradic- 
tions of detail, scientific and historical errors. All 
who have studied the Gospels minutely, and especi- 
ally the quotations in the Gospels and Epistles of 
St. Paul from the Old Testament, know that there 
are various inaccuracies and misapplications of facts 
throughout them. The same microscope of criti- 
cism that reveals to us the depths of inner meaning 
of the divine message in all its manifold fulness, re- 
veals to us also the imperfections, and even the con- 
tradictions of the human messenger ..... None of 
these errors, it is maintained, are of any material 
consequence so far as the substantial veracity of 


(1) p. 50, 51. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 71 


Scripture is concerned. The very fact that a mic- 
roscopic criticism. can detect no more serious incon- 
sistencies in the Scriptural writers is rightly held 
to be one of the most striking testimonies that could 
be given to their truthfulness. Such slight inac- 
curacies are the mere freedoms which writers, 
thoroughly honest, and animated with a high inter- 
est which overlooks trifles, permit themselves. But 
however unimportant in themselves, they are con- 
sidered by many theologians to be altogether incon- 
sistent with a theory of verbal inspiration. How- 
ever minute, they are recognized as real discrepan- 
cies—human imperfections in the sacred record— 
and as consequently proving that the mere text or 
letter of the Scripture is not infallible, that it can- 
not be regarded as a “‘direct utterance of the Most 
High.” (Champber’s Encyclopedia “Inspiration,,’ see 
also “Septuagint.’’) 

If we speak of Inspiration, as of necessity we 
must, we cannot help but ask, why did (or does) 
God not inspire all people, revealing to all alike that 
Greater Existence of Spirit outside the realm of 
man, picking out—as it were—only a few chosen 
ones? The more we reason here, the worse the theo- 
logical muddle becomes, for we cannot conceive or 
think of an “All-wise, All-mighty and Just God with 
human limitations. Expressing ourselves thus, we 
simply voice the sentiment of the average thinker, 
and so, if inspiration is true, then there must be 
someone who does the inspiring and we must be able 
to make this one feasible to us. If God is a man, 
if man is God’s bodily image, then God’s existence 
is also physical in which’ case God must eat and 
drink (as claimed by the Ancient Hebrews), for a 
physical body needs physical nourishment, conse- 
quently the abode of God must be physical and pro- 
vided with the necessary sanitary conditions, an idea 
absolutely foreign to Christ’s idea and from a gen- 
eral point of view more than silly. 

If God is a Spirit (that this is true we must 
admit because, even if Spirit is incomprehensive to 


72 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


man, we cannot conceive God to be anything else 
after we have learned to understand the phenome- 
non) and as such inspired man centuries ago, there 
can be no reason why the same Spirit should not con- 
tinue to inspire man to day. But since we cannot 
comprehend Spirit we cannot understand how such 
inspiration can be. 

Reasoning, it matters not at all that the “Trin- 
ity Idea” is of socalled pagan origin, for we would 
have to admit that God, the Spirit of God, mani- 
fested to man before Abraham appeared in the He- 
brew narratives (although the learned Rabbis of 
modern Judaism admit that he is but a mythical 
figure), for there can be no reason at all why God 
should have waited until Abraham’s time. 

From a psychic viewpoint we know that God 
is triune, namely “Godhead” or “Spirit” (the All 
Embracing Force) ; the ‘‘Holy Spirit’ (Essence of 
God, which unites man with God, the Spiritual Prin- 
ciple) ; the “Logos” or “Word” (Discarnate Ego or 
‘Spiritualized Soul). To express this Trinity properly 
we should say: ‘“‘God-Head, Holy Spirit and Spirit- 
ualized Soul.’’ These three are One, must be One. 

No man ever has seen God, hence no man can 
comprehend Spirit; yet man can comprehend the 
Holy Spirit, the Essence of God, which in its all em- 
bracing force manifests itself in man through the 
phenomena, be they material or spiritual, for in 
them, the activity of the mind after socalled death 
manifests, proving that there is more to life than 
the average mortal ever thought. The phen- 
omena gave man at all times the idea that 
God exists. The phenomena, being dual, were al- 
ways interpreted and used by man in accordance 
with his own duality, therefore it was (and is) the 
human mind which is responsible for the variety of 
Ideas and Beliefs and not God, for God is GOD and 
Not man, and God’s Spirit penetrates man (matter) 
only to the degree of his receptivity. 

It is then the phenomena to which we must 
turn if we wish to understand what Inspiration is. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 73 


In our book on the “Psychology of Mediumship”’ 
we have already thoroughly explained why the phen- 
omena exists, hence we must refer the reader to this 
book and limit ourselves here to the simple state- 
ment that just as in the lower (material) phenom- 
enon the Spirit of the Earth manifests itself, so in 
the higher (spiritual) phenomena manifests the 
Spirit of Heaven, that no matter how low and silly 
the former may be at times, both, the material and 
the spiritual phenomena, are of the same Spirit (1). 
namely of God, for both testify to the existence of 
God in as much even the lower phenomena not only 
prove a Life after Death, but also point out clearly 
the various conditions of that Life, proving beyond 
a doubt the correctness of Christ’s statement “In 
my father’s house are many mansions,” the realm 
of that After Life in which all souls are by “Self- 
Judgment judged by God.” 

Under a phenomena we understand the various 
manifestations of the souls; who, having passed out 
into this Other World and awakened to activity, 
manifest to man upon earth. Coming into mental 
contact with man in the body, man out of the body 
can inspire the former in various ways, and the in- 
spiration thus received depends entirely upon the 
mentality of man. There are, of necessity, various 
kinds of inspiration which must be classed in ac- 
cordance with their purpose, hence we speak of ma- 
terial inspirations also, and divide them into two 
classes, namely first: inspirations in regard to man’s 
physical environment, direct, and second: inspira- 
tions in regard a man’s mental environment. Spirit- 
ual inspirations deal only with things pertaining to 
man’s soul-life, hence to the Truth of Spiritual Life, 
and thus we have in all Spiritual Inspirations the 
Manifestations of the Holy Spirit, while all Material 
Inspirations contain the Spirit of the Earth. Souls 


(1) I. Cor. XII. 4. II. Tim, IT. 20-21. I. Cor. I. 27-28. 


74 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


of the Material Spiritworld, being still of the earth, 
earthy, and therefore still interested greatly in the 
physical—although they may have sublimity of mind 
and piety—will inspire man in accordance with 
man’s personal material and religious interests and. 
this in conformity with their own specific personal 
abilities and convictions (right or wrong), while 
souls of the Spiritual Spheres give man the Funda- 
mentals of that Truth which manifests itself to them 
through the Holy Spirit of their environment, giving 
man thus as much of the Holy Knowledge as he can 
absorb, and these inspirations never differ. (1). 

Understanding this, we are at once upon solid 
ground, for we know wherefrom Inspirations come, 
but we must learn to discern between Spirits. 

Inspiration by vision can be misinterpreted, 
Mental Inspiration, as received in “hearing voices” 
can be imperfectly repeated, while Inspirations re- 
ceived in writing can be altered, interpolated and 
falsified by others. 

The reason why ‘“‘the mode of inspiration, the 
degree and the extent of it are all subjects of dis- 
pute” among the theologians is that they refuse to 
investigate the phenomena, hence they see only the 
letter, which they twist in accordance with their 
own particular school of theologic thought; hence 
they become—without intention, false leaders and 
“Creed-Builders,” instead of “‘Apostles of Facts.” 

The Bible is inspired, it contains Material and 
Spiritual Inspirations as well as Personal Opinions 
of those who were inspired and those who compiled 
the Scriptures. To claim that the Bible is literally 
inspired by a Personal God, and to try to prove this 
statement by claiming it is true because the Bible 
inspires us, is a very silly claim, for the Rig Vedas 
inspire the Hindus, the Koran the Mohammedans, 
the Five King and the Four Shu the Chinese, yet 


(1) Psychology of Mediumship p. 57 64. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 175 


any clergy or layman who makes a statement like the 
above disputes them the right of making the same 
claim for themselves. 

Unable to comprehend Spirit, God cannot be 
comprehended either. If we then speak of the 
Spirit of God, we cannot refer to it as to a “third 
person,” for God is not a Person, neither can God 
be divided in parts. 

Theology has gone so far as to declare that 
“God is Substance,” yet if we speak or refer to sub- 
stance we at once have in mind “matter,” and mat- 
ter is not spirit. No one can think of a substance 
and at the same time believe that spirit and sub- 
stance are one. If we, however, understand the 
phenomena and know that the soul-body is composed 
of matter, then we call this matter “‘substance,” re- 
spectively affirm that it is a substance of earth- 
matter, which through the process of spiritual evo- 
lution becomes more and more etheralized and in 
that condition the soul-body is a substance of eth- 
erealized matter, hence minus all cosmic (animal) 
desires, consequently freed of sex. Matter exists 
even in the highest spheric conditions, but since it 
does not resemble earth-matter (being highly ether- 
ealized), the outward form of all spiritualized souls, 
while resembling their former self from the should- 
ers up, is vaporous, appearing more like a nebulae in 
which the “thinker” works (exists), but never tak- 
ing on the human form proper. 

Now while we can build conjectures regarding 
God upon this phenomenon, and claim God to be a 
Substance, this substance would be even more ethe- 
real than that of which the spiritualized souls are 
composed, and since the phenomenon proves that 
man cannot come in contact with angels—due to 
their vibratory force—it must stand to reason also 
that man cannot come in contact with God; thus then 
it becomes clear that God Itself did not and could not 
have inspired any human being. 

The Spirit or Essence of God—being in the 
strictest sense of the word ethereal vibrations— 


76 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


while a part of God is God only in as much as it em- 
anates from God, and since all spiritualized souls 
live in these vibrations it becomes clear that they 
are the Sons of God, respectively God’s children. 
Man upon earth is the son of God by degrees only, 
and, aspiring true Spirituality, man lives in or as a 
shadow of the things to come. If we then speak of 
Spiritual or Divine Inspirations and claim—as prov- 
en by the phenomenon—that all Divine Inspirations 
contained in the Bible, or elsewhere, were not given 
man by God directly, but come to man through the 
offices of Discarnate Egos, who—living in the Di- 
vine vibrations—act as messengers of God upon 
earth, we simply affirm by experience a Truth 
known to the Seers, Prophets, Disciples and Apost- 
les. 

Luke, who lived at the time of Paul, was with- 
out a question often an eyewitness of manifestations, 
and in our opinion, a spiritual medium, a psychic. 
Reporting the things he heard of when in company 
with the people who knew of these happenings, he— 
without a question—used his own experiences in 
connections with his reports, for undoubtedly he 
“heard voices and saw angels (discarnate egos) him- 
self. The same would, in our opinion have been the 
case with all gospel writers, each of whom would 
report the things most interesting to himself or to 
those to whom they conveyed the respective narra- 
tive. 

The compilers of the New Testament sifted the 
material and destroyed what they thought unfit 
for their purposes, they also added their own ideas 
to the existing stories in which not all of these so 
called holy men believed, because to them the mani- 
festations may have existed in a natural way only 
(Gf at all), hence became a matter of course, thereby 
missing the supernal side. This would naturally 
Jead them toward a dogmatic way of explaining, and 
force them thus to hold on to material explanations 
of the Supernal. 

Taking .all this into consideration it becomes 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 77 


clear that if one cannot believe in these records but 
is interested in the question “Is there a Life after 
Death?’”’, the present day phenomena must answer 
this question. If then this question is answered in 
the affirmative, it would also affirm the Supernal 
side of the question and thus it would clearly prove 
that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God in as much 
he became the vehicle through which the Spirit 
Christ manifested. 

God is a Spirit, hence all things coming from 
God must be spirituelle, must concern directly the 
Spiritual Principle in man. Spirit has no _ sex, 
neither is there sex in the angelic state, for sex be- 
longs to nature, to the physical universe, while the 
Spirit, as well as the angelic condition, is outside the 
physical realm and belongs to the so-called Eccles- 
iastic or Divine Spheres, conditions incomprehensi- 
ble to man. 

If Jesus was born unlike the rest of men, then 
his birth was miraculous, and God, setting aside the 
laws of nature thus, could have willed him into psy- 
sical existence without using a woman’s organism. 
Such a creation would have been more miraculous, 
although it would have caused the same disbelief 
and the same theological wrangling to exist then 
and now. Had there been thousands of eyewitness- 
es testifying that at a certain time a man called 
Jesus was seen to descend from the sky, dressed like 
other men, claiming to be the son of God, those who 
had not witnessed the affair would have laughed it 
out of existence, and the world of to day would do 
likewise, claiming that he was a clever hypnotist, or 
that somebody lied and that others repeated the lie 
until they believed it to be true. 

The Christians deny the truth claimed by the 
Hindus for Chrishna and Buddha, but accept a simi- 
lar account without doubting, because it is written 
in a book called Bible, claiming that this particular 
book was inspired verbally and personally by God, 


78 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


although they do not know how this happened, 
wrangling over the mode of inspiration. 

The acceptance of inspiration one cannot as- 
cribe to a truth manifestly felt while reading the 
- Bible, for the Hindus, the Chinese, the Mohammed- 
ans etc. believe as sincerely in the contents of their 
sacred books as do the present day Christians in 
theirs ; therefore we should be able to find the reason 
for such rather in the ‘‘experienced phenomenon” 
than in the respective Holy Books, and become a- 
ware that while the various Beliefs agree in the 
Fundamentals (Manifestations of the Spirit), their: 
differences are due chiefly to the misinterpretation 
of the Phenomenon, hence to the different opinions 
in regard to what Life is, and since Life moves in 
cycles around the Phenomenon, manifestations dif- 
fer only in degrees; consequently the more the Phen- 
‘omena are studied in direct experiences they more 
they will, of course, be understood, until finally the 
Sacred Truth of the Manifestation becomes univer- 
sally accepted as such. It is this Truth which 
makes us free. 

The conception of the first Christians that 
“Jesus was conceived and born like other men,” 
while out of harmony with the dogma, is in harmony 
with the Fundamentals of the Scriptures, therefore 
it is also in harmony with the Phenomenon and 
proves that “nothing is impossible with God’ when 
matter is receptive to the Spirit of God. 

We are not disturbing the belief in the Annun- 
ciation to Zacharias nor that to Mary, for we firmly 
defend both as true, although we see no necessity of 
a belief that the messenger used the very words as- 
eribed to him, neither are we laying stress upon the 
idea that “Gabriel” was the chosen “‘angel,’”’ because 
there is absolutely nothing in a name; besides this 
we are not speculating, hence cannot make use of 
genealogies and ideas formed by man, holding our- 
selves strictly to the Phenomenon as such still exists 
and is experienced by man, and more so upon our 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 179 


own direct knowledge based upon personal experi- 
ences made after death. 

We are not disputing Joseph’s vision, but we 
dispute the idea that he wanted to divorce his wife 
because she was with child, and claim this to be an 
interpolation of later years. 

To the materialist the Bible stories are a stum- 
bling block because in most cases the scribes of 
the various Old Testament stories simply report 
what they heard, and not understanding the phen- 
omena well enough, mixed with it “patriotic folk- 
lore,” glorifying their tribal God whose existence 
they could fathom as little as can the people to day, 
hence a personification of God became necessary. 
On the other hand, the clergy bound dogmatically to 
hold on to these stories, see in them likewise only 
material things, and having once blundered in their 
conception, of course they seldom dare to openly 
revolt against their superiors who, in turn, fear that 
their entire dogmatic construction would tumble if 
they were to admit their error. Those who want 
to know the Truth and who are acquainted with the 
Eastern Philosophies are tempted to discard Christ- 
ianity and, accepting either Spiritism or Occultism, 
or both, fall from: the frying pan into the fire, de- 
ceiving themselves still more than do the material- 
ists and the clergy. 

To understand the Eastern Philosophies and to 
comprehend the Scriptural Text, both Old and New, 
one must study the Phenomenon. To be able to dis- 
cern between the material and the spiritual inspira- 
tions one must go deeper into this study and make 
the experiences himself, therefore, no matter what 
kind of an argument one may produce, it is and re- 
mains the Phenomenon which will answer the ques- 
tion and solve the apparent riddle of Life. 


80 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


TRINITY-DISCOURSE 


“In the beginning was the word, and the word 
was with God, and the word was God. And the 
word was made flesh and dwelt among us. i 
(John I. v. 1, 14.) 

The Ancient Egyptians worshipped God in the 
form of a Trinity, and when Thulis, a great Egy- 
ptian monarch, asked the oracle of Serapis: “Tell 
me if ever there was before one greater than I, or 
will ever be one greater than 1?” the oracle answer- 
ed: “First God, afterward the Word, and with them 
the Holy Spirit, all these are of the same nature and 
make but one whole of which the power is eternal.” 
(Higgin’s Anac. Vol. II. p. 14.—Ibid Vol. I. p. 805, 
see Nimrod Vol. I p. 119.) The Logos or Word is 
of Egyptian origin. The Alexandrian Theology, of 
which Plato was the chief representative, taught 
that the Logos was the “Second God’, a being of di- 
vine essence, but distinguished from the Supreme 
God. It is also called “the first born son of God.” 
It is in the Alexandrian branch of Judaism that we 
must seek for the antecedents of the Christian Doct- 
rine of the Logos. (A. Reville, Dogma of the Deity 
of Jesus p. 29.) 

The Assyrians had “Marduk” for their Logos. 
He was addressed: “Thou art the powerful one, the 
lifegiver, the prosperer, merciful one among the 
gods, eldest son of Hea, who made heaven and earth, 
Lord of Heaven and earth, who an equal has not, 
merciful one who dead to life raises.” (Ibid) The 
Chaldeans had their “Memra” or “Word of God.” 
( Ibid p. 28). In India we have the “Tri-Murti” or 

“Three-Form,”’ consisting of Brahma, Vishnu and 
Siva. Brahma i is without form, he is the creator, in 
Vishnu he is the preserver and in Siva the destroyer, 
respectively the regenerator. In the Veda we find 
the triple form of Fire, and the Triad of the Gods: 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 81 


Agni, Surya and Indra. (Monier William’s Ind- 
ian Wisdom p. 324.) 

Justin Martyr, a Christian Father, said: “If 
we Christians hold some opinions near to kin to the 
poets and philosophers in great repute among you 
(pagans), why are we so unjustly hated?—There 
is Mercury, Jove’s interpreter, your imitation of Lo- 
gos, in worship among you, and as the Son of God, 
called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more 
than man, yet the title Son of God is very justifable 
upon the account of his wisdom, considering you 
have your Mercury, also called the Son of God, in 
worship under the title of the Word and Messenger 
of God. (Apol. I. ch. XX.—XXII.) 

Again the Christian feels disturbed, finding 
that the doctrine of the Trinity is still older than 
the Christian Era, and without a question the know- 
ledge of the fact that the “Word” was already ac- 
cepted by the Ancients as a very essential part of 
the Spirit (God) must greatly shock him, and this 
perhaps the more so if he studies the definitions of 
the oracle of Serapis and the Alexandrian Concept: 
“Logos: Being of Divine Essence and as such the 
First born Son of God.” If he then considers Jus- 
tin Martyr’s controversy with the pagans, he may 
well come the conclusion that this Church Father 
appears to apologize rather for having Jesus called 
the Son of God than to defend the Christian doct- 
rine. 

We can clearly see that the Hindus (Inders) 
conceived the Creator without a form (body) hence 
in an unadultered belief in Brahma had no way to 
personify him, and thus Modern Hinduism could 
claim that this particular idea was borrowed from 
them by the New Testamental Writers, or by Jesus 
himself, stating that “God is a Spirit’ expresses 
their very thought. The viewpoint received by 
studying the Phenomenon, however, differs widely 
from such a conception and positively disproves 
that conception. 

We have in the Phenomenon an “Outside Force’”’ 


82 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


manifesting to the “Inner Force” of man, a perplex- 
ing Something which the average human mind finds 
hard to comprehend because its manifestation seems 
to be beyond the laws of nature known to man. 
There were at all times people who were sensitive to 
it, who not only formulated distinct ideas and be- 
liefs and, having at their command a knowledge far 
beyond the comprehension of the common people, 
used that knowledge for the purpose of ruling them. 
. This then we call ‘“‘Animism”, because it developed 
fear of Spirits, hence Spiritworship and a belief 
that inanimate things are possessed by Spirits. 
There were, however, at all times people who, 
finding far more in the Phenomenon than others, 
formulated distinct ideas and beliefs based upon 
their experiences, and thus laying the foundation to 
a better understanding of the Phenomenon, left 
their ideas and beliefs with their disciples, some of 
which in a very natural way always fell back into 
animism, producing by degrees Occultism and 
Spiritism, which finally brought forth new schools, 
out of which the Alexandrian Philosophies gradually 
emerged. To these philosophers the Phenomenon 
in its various manifestations was well known, and 
so, if we read of the Essenes and believe that their 
society or school existed about 500 years before our 
era, their doctrines, we may well assume, were at 
the beginning but a mixture of the best comprehen- 
sions of the Phenomenon and later became—because 
of their constant concentration upon the best—ad- 
vanced more, due to the still more advanced contact 
with the Other World. Reading the history of that 
time to the time of the Alexandrian school (300 B. 
C. to 500 A. D.) it seems to become quite clear that 
a “Spiritual Awakening” took place during said 
period. While there is nowhere an authentic proof 
for the existence of Chrishna, nor of any Buddha, 
it is quite reasonable to believe that such characters 
actually existed and taught a certain “Sublimity”’ 
to man, but the quintessence of that particular Sub- 
limity must, in our opinion, be credited to the philos- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 83 


ophers of Alexandria and this especially to the geni- 
us of the Greeks. Nevertheless, the evolution of 
the Phenomenon from the crudest form, of Animism 
to the highest form of Mental Contact, seems to sug- 
gest a “Higher Force” as the Fundamental of the 
crudest Phenomenon, for without a Life after Death 
even the crudest Phenomenon could not exist. The 
lowest Phenomenon testifies therefore to the exist- 
ence of the Highest Manifestation, consequently 
proves with its own existence the existence of a 
“Spiritual Force’, called God. Here then we enter 
upon the “Spiritual Side of Life,” and while we can- 
not—as man—comprehend God and say “God is a 
Spirit” and as such has no form, has no body in that 
sense of the word, the very evolution shown in the 
Phenomenon points toa ‘“Supernal Purpose” in 
which we cannot help seeing a well defined plan 
which, as it seems, begun to crystallize more and 
more, proving that the more man’s concentrative 
force (reason) focused upon the better understand- 
ing of the Phenomenon, the more this plan fulfilled 
itself, leaving—as it were—during the intervals its 
' markstones either by way of introducing a Thought 
of Coming Events by using a capable human brain 
as the medium of teaching that thought actually, or 
by way of “Vision and Prophecy.” Since such ve- 
hicles of communication were not destined to be but 
of one particular tribe or race (man being of one 
family before God), these manifestations of teach- 
ing, of vision and prophecy, were universal, hence 
testify one of the other, but were interpreted and. 
used geographically. This means that somewhere, 
beyond man’s sphere of influence, exists a “Council” 
who endeavors to show man the way, that however 
this Council is not ‘‘almighty”’ because of man’s own 
animal nature, which does not readily respond to 
the higher vibrations, and under the laws of nature 
is only, to a certain degree, sensitive to cosmic vi- 
brations; consequently in his crude state of mind 
man can come in contact only with “‘his own flesh 


84 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


and blood,” with the Phenomenon produced by his 
own kind. 

In speaking then of the Alexandrian Philos- 
ophies we become more charitable toward their ex- 
pounders if we learn to understand that because of 
the profound study of the Phenomenon by these wise 
men it became possible to the “Supernal Council” 
to fulfil its mission, to impress and to develop the 
very characters required to bring before man the 
solution of the great mystery called Life. But this 
again produced an apparent new mystery, because 
the process as to how the “Logos”, the Word, could 
become “flesh”, puzzled those who did not believe in 
the Phenomenon. Those of the Alexandrians who 
understood the Phenomenon saw nothing new in it, 
to them the manifestations of the Spirit through 
Jesus of Nazareth was but the natural sequence of a 
contact made, the natural result of all contacts being 
the same. It was this point of view which prevented 
them feeling the “Spiritual Aspect,” consequently 
they could not understand the new doctrine of the 
“Better Resurrection” and, rejecting it, they held on 
to their own discoveries, explaining and teaching 
them, in accordance with a philosophy most appeal- 
ing to them. | | 

Plato, who next to Socrates was the greatest 
Philospoher and Truthseeker among the Greeks, had 
perhaps more direct knowledge then some of the 
Disciples of Jesus, and was correct in distinguish- 
ing “Two Elements” of the soul, and in stating that 
“the divine part of the soul concerns itself with the 
knowledge of the Eternal and partakes of the Di- 
vine Principle, while the mortal soul (anima) con- 
cerns itself with the body and is perishable’; al- 
though he was wrong when he stated that those two 
elements are one, or linked together by the Spirit, 
unless he meant “linked together by mind,” which 
however, is but the net result of both the mortal 
soul and the spiritual soul, and constitutes the real 
Ego or Thinker. His belief in future retribution 
and his exonerating God from the responsibility 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 85 


of Evil or Sin, with his explanation of the Logos, as 
well as his distinction of the two elements of the 
soul, proves his deep study of the Phenomenon, mak- 
ing him the greatest expounder of the Fundamentals 
of the Psychology of the Soul of his time and there- 
fore of the Principles of Spiritualism. 

_ Taking into consideration that such profound 
knowledge was already expounded three or four 
hundred years before our era, we need not wonder 
why some of the biblical writers (old and new) 
should have made use of it; neither is it wrong to 
believe that the compilers of the Bible later inter- 
polated, using some of their own more or less Alex- 
andrian ideas for the purpose. 


86 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


ANNUNCIATION-DISCOURSE 


Studying the Phenomenon one will find that 
while it is in part physical, it is mental as a whole, 
and while it is abstract it becomes concrete in vari- 
ous ways, being then either audible or visible. It 
can be audible only in “‘raps and knocks’, or with the 
help of the human organism and this in particular 
where the vocal chords are used for the purpose (1). 

The conversations refered to by Luke were men- 
tal and heard only by the party or parties concerned. 
This could be best explained by refering to vivid 
dreams, during which the dreaming person sees, 
hears and speaks to people, all of which, of course, 
cannot be partaken by an other person. If the brain 
of a person is far enough developed for the purpose, 
this which is called ‘“Trance’”’ is not required for the 
“hearing, seeing and speaking” because such a de- 
velopment made the brain so sensitive to external 
_vibrations that it readily responds without the 
slightest discomfort. That the people refered to by 
Matthew and Luke had such a development and were 
concerts used to such discourses, must become 
clear. 

St. Luke introduces first the Highpriest Zach- 
arias and his wife Elisabeth, of whom he says: 
both were righteous before God, walking in all the 
commandments and ordinances of the Lord blame- 
less.”” This is a very important point from a psy- 
chic viewpoint, testifying in itself that their contact 
with the Other World was a “Spiritual Contact’, 


\ 


(1) Psychology of Mediumship. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 87 


for such people can—under the law of attraction— 
not make a contact with the Material Spiritworld, 
but this does not at all exclude the idea that they 
did not have their various and necessary tribula- 
tions previous to their higher development, for they 
were but human. That Zacharias as a Highpriest 
should be a Psychic is nothing to wonder about, for 
such gifts were in those days cherished in families, 
and this especially in families of priests. 

Refering to their age and expressing the idea 
that Elisabeth was barren, must be called “‘the lay- 
ing of the foundation for the miracle anticipated’, 
but from a medical point of view it is an idea which 
ill becomes a medicus, and Luke is supposed to have 
been a doctor. The idea expressed is oldtestamental 
and can be nothing but an interpolation injected by 
some one else, and Luke is the only gospelwriter 
whose account contains it. His records are in the 
main based upon hearsay and blunder even where 
he repeats the conversion of Paul, yet he was con- 
nected with Paul and therefore should have known 
better. (Acts IX. v. 7, and ch. XXII. v. 9.) 

That Zacharias came into contact with a “high- 
er spiritual force than that to which he was accust- 
omed, becomes clear in the statement “‘he was troubl- 
ed and fear fell upon him”, an expression used 
throughout the Scriptures where the respective mor- 
tals suddenly faced a Discarnate Ego of higher vi- 
brations than produced by those to whom they were 
attuned or in harmony with. It is this very vibra- 
tory force which makes it impossible to man to come 
into contact with “Angels”, a contact which would 
burn out man’s brain much the same way as experi- 
enced by a high voltage of electricity. 

Zacharias losing his voice during the time of 
this contact is nothing to wonder about, for while 
fear has at times lamed the speechcenters, here the 
vibratory force was sufficient to do the same thing. 
His doubting of the message is but human, and it 


88 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


should be noted that no matter how many proofs 
some of the Old Testmental Seers received, they 
doubted and had to be given particular signs, a hu- 
man peculiarity still noticeable to day. True, the 
sign given him with the prophesy that “he shall be 
dumb until the day these things, shall be performed” 
must be classed a “‘miracle”’ as long as the Phenom- 
ena are not understood, but then is not the Phenom- 
enon a miracle also? 

Zacharias was a Psychic, hence had spiritual 
guidances. Hie was “led by the spirit,” and these 
guidances at times controlled his Cerebellum, there- 
fore if they desired “to hold his speechcenters” so 
that he could not make use of them, they could do 
so by “constant control’, under which the rest of 
the faculties would in no way be interfered with. 
Such a state resembles ‘““Aphemia’’, and is some- 
times caused by “Spirit-Overcontrol,’ and can pro- 
duce paralysis. In the case of Zacharias the Ap- 
hemia was a punishment for disbelief, which may 
sound rather peculiar and appear to carry justice 
too far, yet all Psychics know they are often puni- 
shed severely by their guidances for doing things 
against their better knowledge, hence they under- 
stand the spiritual meaning of terms like “brim- 
stone and fire” as well as that of “hell”. From a 
psychic viewpoint it is not necessary to believe that 
Zacharias was “dumb until the prophecy came 
true,” there is no necessity for such a belief, neither 
is it necessary for ones salvation to believe that it 
actually happened. It is, however, quite possible 
that Zacharias lost his speech due to fear as well 
as to the unaccustomed vibratory force and that at 
the same time an Over-Contact was established and 
served as form of punishment. 

The materialists are right in their claim that 
miracles are not performed, for no matter how mar- 
velous anything may be, there is not one single true 
phenomenon ever produced by even the slightest 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 89 


deviation of the laws of nature, but man, not under- 
standing these laws can, of course, not comprehend 
his own mental force, which is but a small part of 
the very laws of nature he so frequently disturbs, 
and for this reason he cannot believe that ‘“‘Soul- 
Mind’’, being the most marvelous force in itself, per- 
forms “miracles” daily upon earth by making use of 
the psychic laws which manifest themselves within 
the natural and divine laws. 

“...-He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, 
even from his mother’s womb....and shall go be- 
fore him in the spirit of Elias....” (Luke I. 15-17). 

“ ...Fear not Mary....thou shalt conceive in 
thy womb and bring forth a son....he shall be 
great and called the son of the Highest....The Holy 
Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the 
Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that 
holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be call- 
ed the Son of God.” (Luke I. 30-35.) 

No one can comprehend God for the simple 
reason that no one ever saw God. For the same 
reason no one can comprehend Spirit. Since no 
mortal ever saw an Angel, it is impossible for any- 
body mentally to picture an angel without misusing 
his imagination. True, angels, being teachers in the 
Spiritual Spheres, can be comprehended by those 
who, living there, come in contact with them, and so 
it can be said that the spiritual guidances of Psy- 
chics on some occasions gave a description of them, 
but we know from our own experiences that to ex- 
plain spiritual things, even to a well developed Psy- 
chic, produces doubt in his critical mind. This is 
but natural, for even he can comprehend only things 
he actually sees or comes in contact with, hence he 
uses for all things beyond the realm of his compre- 
hension the term “believe” instead of the term 
“know’’, without casting doubt upon the veracity 
of his guidances. 

Angels are usually pictured with “wings”. 


90 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Why should they. have wings? “Thoughts have 
wings.” It is a symbolic expression implying first 
“protection.” A fowl takes its young under its wings 
to protect it from from an enemy; second it implies 
‘instant action, quick service, help.” 

Sometimes the wings of angels are highly col- 
ored, as is the dress of an angel, and while these 
wings and dress colors are symbolic, in most all 
pictures of angels they mean nothing, expressing 
rather the opposite of this which they mean to ex- 
press, because the hue of coloring is wrong, and the 
reason for the existence of color not understood. 
Colors are of the utmost importance in all pheno- 
mena, and thus we see even here how interpolation 
and misinterpretation works in the Ecclesiastic Art. 
This is also due to the fact that Spiritual Evidence 
became lost. 

The Holy Ghost cannot be comprehended under 
the Dogma of the Trinity as explained in the Ortho- 
dox Church, for if God is a Person, a man, and the 
Logos, the Word is a Person, a man, then the Holy 
Ghost, being the third person in the Trinity, is a 
man also. Since all three are one and can be every- 
where at the same time, all three must have, not 
only the power to divide themselves into untold num- 
bers of atoms, but must also have the power to di- 
vide the Most Divine Intelligence into three parts 
and then into untold numbers of atoms, each of 
which would have to be the Most Supreme Intelli- 
gence itself. 

There is no reason for such a complicated di- 
vine surgery. 

God, the Incomprehensible, Most Holy Intelli- 
gence, Supreme Existence, Spirit per se, Its Abode 
and Selfexistence cannot be brought into argument. 
without speculation, and to speculate with things 
abstract is a folly. 

We know that God is, because we understand 
the Supernal Purpose of Life and therefore we know 
that this purpose would not be if there were no Sup- 
ernal Intelligence in existence. Calling this Intel- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 91 


ligence God or Spirit per se, we do know that Its 
Essence manifests Itself directly throughout the 
Spiritual Spheres, and in an _ indirect way 
throughout the Material Spheres, including the 
Sphere of Man.—Anything which exists manifests 
its existence, yet there are existences which are not 
manifesting to man because man’s senses are too 
far removed from them. 

. The Essence of God, called Holy Ghost or Holy 
Spirit , is but a vibration which, emanating from a 
source far beyond man’s sphere, destroys all coarser 
atoms of matter and, purifying matter, holds within 
its vibratory force: the etherial substance thus as- 
sembled. It is therefore “Fire, Light, Water,” (*) 
respectively “Vapor”, in which the Natural and the 
Supernal are in complete harmony. This harmony 
produces the Spiritual Environments in which are 
Light and Peace, but the closer to the earth we are, 
the less this vibratory essence can be felt, due to the 
earth atmosphere and man’s mind, which are mat- 
ter. Since the Essence of God animates matter only 
to the degree of its receptivity, God is almighty only 
where matter is in the condition to allow the ether- 
eal vibrations to reach it and to regenerate it. 

If, then, the St. John-to-be was ‘‘filled with the 
Holy Ghost from his mother’s womb,” the miracle is 
simple enough, for his mother’s mind was in the con- 
dition to come —under the Law of Attraction—into 
contact with Discarnate Egos (Spiritual Guidances) 
hence, while the child was conceived and born under 
the laws of nature, its soul grew under the ethereal 
' vibrations received by the mother, i.e. the vibratory 
force of John’s personal Spiritual Guidance was, and 
remained, directly focused upon the embryo’s 
growth through the mind of its mother. It should 
then be clear, that the conception of John was not 
tainted by the lust of the flesh, but was a matter of 
“Spiritual Selection’, hence John was conceived in 
an Immaculate Condition of the mind. 

The thoughts expressed in verse 17: “‘he shall 
go before him in the spirit and power of Elias” does 
(*) Hebrews XII. 29. 


92 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


not mean that. the soul-mind of Elias was the direct 
spiritual guidance of John; it means that his spirit- 
ual guidance will be in application like the one Elias 
had, namely one which manifests itself strongly to 
the material senses of man.. If we read Luke ch. IX. 
54-56., we see that Christ brings out strongly this 
very material condition by saying: “Ye know not 
what manner of spirit ye are of.”” When according 
to St. John (ch. I. 19-23) John the Baptist was ask- 
ed whether or not he is Elias, he answered ‘‘no’’. 
This answer shuts out all interpolations regarding 
the subject of the “Reincarnation of Elias” as well 
as the reading into the text Malachi IV. verse 5 and 
other similar references. 

John as “the man sent from God to bear witness 
of the Light” (John I. 6-8) knew his own guidances 
and could see them, therefore he was well aware that 
he is not Elias in the abstract—that Elias was not 
one of his guides. Even so the reference to Elias 
has a specific meaning and implies, as already point- 
ed out, that his spiritual guidance will—like the 
force of Elias—manifest itself strongly to the ma- 
terial senses of man, and that the same force is (and 
will again be) brought into service for the purpose 
of destroying the false and degenerating ideas a- 
mong men. Preaching the coming Event, he used 
the (material) power and spirit only for the purpose 
of convincing the people of the Truth, leading them 
thus to Repentance, thereby fulfilling the Mission 
of the Spirit. 

Comparing the Annunciation of the Conception 
of John with that.of Jesus, we at once notice that 
here the Annunciation was made directly to Mary 
and not to Joseph, while in John’s case it was made 
to Zacharias, and we wonder if any clergy ever 
noticed the difference? 

There is, of course, a reason for it, to wit: 
“Zacharias was the Psychic through whom the 
Spirit worked, while Elizabeth was receptive only 
in degrees. Mary was a Psychic, and it appears 
from the text that she was not afraid of the appari- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 93 


tion, which proves that her spiritual guidances were 
of the same plane of vibration the Discarnate Mes- 
senger came from, hence she was used to the vibra- 
tory force produced by him. This proves also be- 
yond a doubt that Mary was of a higher spiritual- 
ized order than Zacharias. 

While Mary was not afraid, she troubled herself 
about the style of Salutation, because she was never 
before addressed thus. Her answering the saluta- 
tion with the question: “How shall this be, seeing 
I know not man?” must be taken as an interpola- 
tion, because she was espoused and contemplated to 
be married, therefore the messenger’s answer: 
“With God nothing shall be impossible’—becomes 
an interpolation also, fortifying the text in regard 
to the miracle anticipated. It appears more plausi- 
ble that Mary asked: ‘‘How can this be, since I am 
not married?’—and then the messenger’s answer 
takes on quite a different aspect. 

According to the text, Mary received the Holy 
Ghost shortly before her marriage to Joseph, and 
having conceived she was overshadowed by the Pow- 
er of the Highest, therefore the child was holy and 
was to be called the ‘Son of God.”’ 

Receiving the Holy Ghost means to have pro- 
duced the condition necessary to become receptive 
to ethereal waves and thus to come in contact with 
Discarnate Egos and to remain in that contact. It 
means to “receive the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, 
to become thus spiritualized,” which is the beginning 
of an “Incarnation,” for in that condition one be- 
comes by degrees one with the Spirit. Then to be call- 
ed the “Son of God” is in perfect harmony with the 
result of the spiritual phenomenon, and even if Jesus 
was not called the Son of God before the middle of 
the second century, (and one can easily come to the 
conclusion that such statements found in the text 
are interpolations of that time, basing ones reason- 
ing upon Justine Marty’s own statement—p. 82) 
the result of the spiritual phenomenon will prove the 
correctness of the statement contained in the text, 


94 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


although that result does not harmonize with the 
dogmatic view held by the clergy. 

From the point of view arrived at by studying 
the psychic laws and the phenomenon, as well*as 
from our own psychic experiences, there is no differ- 
ence between the Conception of John and that of 
Jesus, with the exception of the purpose involved; 
yet there is a very marked difference between them 
in the text. This difference is not only one of ex- 
pression, but more so in application, hence it is the 
application itself which spells disaster to the doct- 
rine as formulated and believed in, for while John 
received and was filled with the Holy Ghost even 
from his mother’s womb, Jesus was in his mother’s 
womb only a “holy thing,” to be called the son of God 
because the Power of the Highest overshadowed 
Mary, and according to the text Jesus did not re- 
ceive the Holy Ghost before he became clarified. 
The text states that “the Holy Ghost was not given, 
because Jesus was not yet clarified’,(1) which of 
course implies that there was no Holy Ghost given 
to anybody before that time, although we find that 
the Holy Ghost descended bodily in the form of a 
dove upon Jesus—and remained—while he was bap- 
tised(2). This simply proves to us that Luke, the 
compilers or translators of his narratives, used the 
term, ‘‘Holy Ghost” too frequently, without discern- 
ment, and that the text—as it stands—could not 
have been verbally inspired even by any Discarnate 


From the dogmatic viewpoint Jesus himself is 
the second person in the Trinity, this being so, he 
is not only God himself, but of necessity, also the 
Holy Ghost. Consequently when Mary received the © 
Holy Ghost, she (dogmatically) received God, the 
Word and the Holy Ghost, respectively she received 


(1) John VII. 39. 
(2) Luke III. 22. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 95 


into her womb the whole Trinity, and thus we would 
have (dogmatically speaking) in Jesus this Trinity 
incorporated in the flesh. This being so, Jesus, be- 
ing the Holy Ghost, would not have been in need of 
the Baptism by John. The descending of the Holy 
Ghost upon him during the ceremony, as well as his 
‘clarification for the purpose of receiving the Holy 
Ghost, would not have been necessary, for (dogmati- 
cally speaking) being God he is the Holy Ghost and 
thus he would have descended upon himself. 

God is a Spirit and as such cannot be compre- 
hended. Nevertheless we know that God is. We 
further know that God manifests in the Spirit, and 
this term means that the Spirit of God, which, of 
necessity, must be holy (free of sin), in its Essence 
works in and through all Discarnate Egos. We 
know further that Discarnate Egos are not of the 
earth earthy, that they have outgrown all carnal de- 
sires and advanced beyond the Earthplane; hence 
in their spiritual evolution reached new conditions 
of life (heavenly spheres), each in accordance with 
its own degree of holiness achieved, representing 
thus each a part of the Essence or Spirit of God. 
The term Spirit of God has then a dual meaning, 
first: the Essence of God as coming from God to 
spiritualize, and second: the Spiritualized Soul- 
Mind (Discarnate Ego), which comes from the 
Spiritual Spheres, the soul which has the “Breath of 
Life’ and which contrasts with the soul “made of 
the dust of the Ground,” the natural man, whose 
soul enters the earthsphere, the Material Spirit 
World, resurrecting to Condemnation. 

One cannot make a picture of God, neither can 
one make a picture of the Holy Ghost, to produce 
such pictures is Idolatry and helps to destroy the 
Truth. 

The Holy Ghost can come upon a person only 
by way of vibration if the receptive mood is produc- 
ed, but it cannot come upon anyone without the 
Manifestation of the Spirit, the Discarnate Ego, 
which is the Medium through which the Essence of 


96 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


God works or manifests. The Spirit or Discarnate 
Ego becomes thus the “Logos”, the Word, the Ex- 
pression of the Spirit of God, which in contact with 
the human brain can make itself audible in man’s 
sphere of activity as if it were man to man. The 
brain of man is thus, like the Discarnate Ego, the 
Medium through which the Spirit of God manifests 
to man, and thus the brain is, or becomes, the 
“Jacob’s Ladder’ upon which the ‘“Angels’—spirit- 
ualized souls—descend and ascend. 

That Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a highly 
spiritualized woman cannot be questioned; that she 
was a Psychic the text proves. Her mental condi- 
tion proves beyond a doubt that her guidances were 
highly spiritualized souls, that while she already 
had the Holy Ghost to the degree contained in her 
guidances, her “becoming overshadowed by the pow- 
er of the Highest” gave her during her pregnancy 
the Holy Spirit to the fullest degree possible. This 
means that the “Spirit Christ” working through her 
guidances (directing them) purified her still more, 
that the phenomenon of the Spirit purified the 
child within her through her mind, and that, for 
Hues reason the child was a “holy thing’, was free 
of sin. 

If we now speak of the Spirit Christ and call 
Him the Only Begotten Son of God who ever mani- 
fested in the flesh, we must not forget that in re- 
mote Old Testament days “the Sons of God visit- 
ed man upon earth” for the purpose —as some peo- 
ple claim—of “helping man”’; but failed in their mis- 
sion because they fell in love and married the daugh- 
ters of man. We refer to this here only because of 
the scriptural term used, stating in plain words that 
they were the “Sons of God’. We cannot now go 
deeper into this, but taking the text as it stands, 
there can be no doubt in regard to God having had 
a number of sons, some of which were black sheep, 
which, while incomprehensible from a psychic point 
of experience, sounds more than silly from a ration- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 97 


al point of view and is positively impossible to have 
happened under the Divine Laws. | 

Jesus of Nazareth, while conceived and born 
under the laws of nature, is the Spiritual Son of 
Christ, because the Spirit Christ called him spirit- 
ually into existence, and thus the Spirit Christ is the 
direct Heavenly Father of Jesus. Being the Highest 
Power in Spirituality, the Spirit Christ is the Son of 
God, the Logos, the only one who ever gave man the 
full spiritual Truth by teaching through the brain 
of Jesus the Mystery of the Better Resurrection. 
Understanding this we can also understand why 
John said: “He that cometh from above is above all: 
he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of 
the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.” 
(John III. 31). Then all the former or pre-christ- 
ian manifestations become very clear and selfex- 
plaining and this so much the more so if we think 
a little about Christ’s own words: “All that ever 
ea me are thiefs and robbers....” (John 

ees 

Up to that Advent man knew only of one re- 
surrection (although it was not called thus) for in 
the phenomena, which manifested everywhere, man 
received various knowledge concerning his condi- 
tion after death, and, making use of such knowledge 
in accordance with his mental development, he ap- 
plied it best he could, creating many gods, angels 
_and demons; suppositions which produced supersti- 
tions and many false beliefs and wrong doctrines. 

To understand the phenomena is, like anything 
else, a matter of mental evolution, and where ever 
the phenomenon became a matter of worship the re- 
sult was always bad, for it created phantoms. 

God is not a Phantom, neither is Christ a Ghost, 
hence to worship God does not mean to fear God, it 
means to concentrate upon the Most Holy conceiv- 
able, to learn to understand that such concentration 
produces a receptive mood in which one can come 
into contact with ethereal vibrations within which 
Discarnate Egos (spiritualized souls of former men 


98 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


and women) can reach ones mind and by degrees 
spiritualize one, giving one thereby that understand- 
ing which—in leading us to Christ, frees us from 
all foolish genealogies, corrupt doctrines and false 
conceptions and finally makes us Sons and Daught- 
ers of God through the example given us in Jesus 
of Nazareth. 

True, the existence of God and the existence of 
Christ may not be conceivable to many, yet the phen- 
omenon works to day as yesterday, and if the phen- 
omenon proves itself true then the Spirit Christ 
proves Itself true also, even if the less studious mind 
may still find it incomprehensible. 

Having in the phenomena the direct proof of 
the existence of spiritual evolution, this very evolu- 
tion proves the Supernal Purpose of Life, and so- 
whether comprehensible or not—the existence of a 
Supernal Existence and of a Supernal Council be- 
comes involintarily a matter of necessity, but since 
neither can be made visible (concrete) to man, it 
is up to man to study the phenomena earnestly and 
to become guided by the “Word” to save himself 
from the results of the Common Resurrection. For 
this purpose the phenomenon works upon earth, a 
miracle in itself to all who do not understand the 
Jaws, and a folly, a product of morbid minds to those 
who judge without knowledge; while to Orthodoxy 
it is and remains a delusion of Satan, for Orthodoxy 
represents Ignorance of the Laws to day the same as 
in Christ’s time. | 

If it is true that no historian of the time men- 
tioned Jesus of Nazareth, and that Josephus refering 
to John the Baptist ignores Jesus, it seems to us that 
such missing testimony cannot do away with the act- 
ual existence of Jesus. It appears to us that the life of 
Jesus testifies to a rather short period of public ac- 
tivity, that this activity, while taking in a number 
of towns and cities in various territories, reached 
comparatively few, although the text at times-refers 
to a “multitude” of people, that there were before 
and after him many others who worked “miracles” 


1S JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 99. 


(1) and Paul said:.... “All these worketh that one 
and the selfsame spirit’ (2), which allows us to as- 
sume that the people of the time were used to these 
things and followed those whose ‘“‘work” appealed 
to them most. We must consider also that ‘‘mira- 
cles and tests” given by Jesus were not given in a 
sensational way, that they had the distinct purpose 
of awakening the soul of man; hence while talked 
about remained more or less a private matter of, 
perhaps, a comparatively small circle of people in 
each community until the Pharisees begun to make 
him their target; even then, and during his trial, 
the notoriety may have been but temporary and 
without interest to any historian. As far as we 
know, no historian ever mentioned Paul’s trial be- 
fore Felix and Ceasar. 

If John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus, Jesus 
must have lived at the time of John, for he testifies 
of him. So does John the Evangelist, who appears 
to have been first a disciple of John the Baptist, al- 
though neither Josephus nor any other historian 
mentions him; yet Polycarp claims to have been a 
disciple of John the Evangelist. The doubt inject- 
ed in regard to the time when Jesus lived seems to 
come chiefly from the historic inconsistencies of 
Matthew and Luke, as well as from their phantastic 
appearing reports of the birth of John and Jesus. 
If we, however, understand the phenomenon, these 
doubts vanish; and knowing that characters like 
John the Baptist, St. John, Mark, Luke and Matt- 
hew, Peter and Paul etc, did live at the time, the 
various historic defects contained in the text are of 
no account, especially if we consider that such can 
easily be interpolations of later years. 

We have in the New Testamental texts records 
of the Life and Works of John the Baptist, Jesus, 


(1) p. Mark IX. 38-40. 
(2) I. Cor. XII. 5-11. 


100 IS JESUS OF. NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


his Disciples and Apostles. These records could not 
have been dedicated to history, they were simply the 
experiences made by those who became linked with 
Jesus and his followers, and more should not be ex- 
pected of them. Whether nor not these experiences 
are true the present day phenomenon must decide, 
because the respective records give us only the as- 
sertion that these things were experienced and testi- 
fied to by the people mentioned, while the present 
day phenomenon is now like a voice (that) cries: 
“make plain in the wilderness the ways of the 
Lord!” (Is. XI. 3.) 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 101 


BAPTISM 


The Baptism of Jesus has much to do with our 
subject, in fact without psycho-analysis of this doct- 
rine our issue would be incomplete. 

One of the most pernicious arguments among 
the churches seems to be that produced by Baptism, 
although each church claims to believe in one and 
the same God, as well as in the idea that God in- 
spired the various biblical authors, a behef which 
forces the question: ‘‘Why then does the result of 
said inspirations remain so misty and uncertain 
that the Church of God became split into an endless 
chain of right and wrong believers ?— 

Baptism is, of course, not of Christian origin, 
for “washing with water” had in much earlier times 
a religious meaning, and’ the Jews washed and bap- 
tized those converted by them. The argument as 
it presents itself rests entirely upon the question of 
“Immersion,” although the present day Christian 
Church seems to agree more or less that “Baptism 
by Immersion” is scriptural, even if the various 
sects follow their own inclinations or suit the one 
converted by them. 

The Greek word ‘ ‘baptizo” implies to “immerse, 
to dip or to wash’, so that afterall it matters but 
little which form ones conscience allows one to se- 
lect, even if John the Baptist and some of the Apost- 
les immersed their converts; for Jesus himself did 
not baptize, not with water, and so if one believes 
honestly that a complete Immersion (backward, for- 
ward or sideways) saves one more than mere 

“sprinkling,”’ ones mind should at least be at rest in 
ones belief of salvation; but then one should never 
wrangle with those who feel the same way about 
sprinkling, for wrangling soils the soul. 

Under the dogma of Baptism it becomes clear 
that those not baptized, even babies, are eternally 


102 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


damned, although historically Infant Baptism was 
not made a necessity before the Augustinian Doct- 
rine of the Original Sin came into effect. (412-418 A. 
D.) It must then be quite clear that, doctrinally 
speaking, all infants which were not baptized and 
died, and all people who died without being baptized 
are eternally damned, have no chance whatever to 
become saved, although they knew nothing of this 
“Divine Curse’, which of course, does neither speak 
well of God’s Mercifulness nor of His Divine Justice. 
‘The idea expressed is absolutely unscriptural, for 
while to be baptized with water can only be inter- 
preted as an outward sign of the acceptance of the 
Belief in Christ, forming as such an Initiation into 
the Brotherhood of those who believe in Him, it does 
not imply that the one baptized thus “received the 
Holy Ghost,” because all those who were baptized 
by the Apostles (without water) “prophesied and 
spoke with tongues,” while there is apparently no 
such record of those who were baptized by John the 
Baptist and his disciples, and modern Baptism has— 
as far as we know—never produced such a phen- 
omenon. We are quite certain that if ever such 
would happen the baptizing clergy and his laymen 
would declare such a person either insane or possess- 
ed by the devil. 

In this kind of “Dogmatic”, like anywhere else 
where the clerical mind is concerned, we find the 
“letter” predominating and the “spirit” missing. 
It seems that no matter which way one looks in the 
Christian Church, one always finds that popeism ~ 
which alone knows the Truth, a Popeism which dis- 
regards the Spirit entirely and interpretes each 
Bible sentence in accordance with its own “Grand- 
father-Clause,” exchanging parts of said clause 
sometimes with Ultra-Modern Ideas of people who, 
having somewhat outgrown clerical grandfathering, 
demand a more liberal interpretation. 

John the Baptist called the people of his time 
(his own race) to repentance, and baptised by Im- 
mersion. There was a deeper idea connected with 


Is JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 103 


this action, which in iteslf only “prepared the way 
materially.” This deeper idea was “to establish the 
fact of the appearance of the Spirit Christ.”’ Only 
John refers to this (John I. 26-34). The three other 
writers report only the material side, Matthew and 
Mark stating that Jesus, after stepping from the 
Jordan, saw the Dove and heard the Voice, but do 
not report that John the Baptist saw and heard the 
same thing, while Luke simply relates what he had 
heard repeated by others. St. John practically ig- 
nores the material side and brings out strongly the 
Spiritual issue. It is, therefore, of the greatest im- 
portance that we study St. John’s account, for he, 
having been first a disciple of John the Baptist, 
became the beloved disciple of Jesus, and was one of 
the three chosen ones who were witnesses of the 
great manifestations around their master (of which 
the rest of the disciples knew only by hearsay), and 
one of whom justly can be said that he was the only 
one who fully understood these manifestations. Ac- 
cording to his records, John the Baptist said to those 
who were sent to him by the Pharisees to inquire if 
he is the Christ or Elias: 

“I baptize with water, but there standeth one 
among you whom ye know not; he it is, who coming 
after me is prefered: before me, whose shoe’s latch- 
et I am not worthy to-unloose. The next day John 
seeth Jesus coming unto him and said, Behold the 
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
world. This is he of whom I said after me cometh 
aman which is prefered before me, and I knew him 
not but that he should be made manifest to Israel, 
therefore am I come baptizing with water. And 
John bare record saying: I saw the Spirit descend 
from, heaven like a dove and it abode upon him, and 
I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize with 
water, the same said unto me: Upon whom thou 
shalt see the Spirit descend and remaining upon him, 
the same is he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost. 


104 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of 
God.” 

John and Jesus were cousins, hence they know 
one the other. The statement “I knew him not” 
therefore cannot refer to Jesus. The text seems 
somewhat mixed, verses 26 to 31 can be taken only 
as an explanatory introduction to verses 32 to 34. 
From the text of John the Evangelist it appears that 
John the Baptist was not told by his parents that his 
cousin Jesus is the Son of God, for he did not know 
who it would be through whom the Spirit Christ 
should manifest, and his statement “after me com- 
eth a man which is prefered before me” implies 
clearly that he did not think this one to be 
“God”. Not knowing that Jesus was the one through 
whom the Messiah would manifest to Israel, John 
could not have pointed him out as “the Lamb of 
God” before the manifestation proved to him (John) 
that it was he. The one who sent John to baptize 
with water was a ‘“‘Soul-Mind in the Spirit and Pow- 
er of Elias,” a Discarnate Ego which had the Spirit 
and Power Elias was endowed with, one who, while 
spiritualized was still of the Mosiac Law, a teacher 
thereof, and for this reason John the Baptist was 
neither the “Light”? nor did he have the “Light”, 
although he was filled with the Holy Ghost from his 
mother’s womb. 

If Baptism is the symbol or necessity to perfect 
purification from sin, the Baptism of Jesus was not 
necessary, for even dogmatically he was free of sin. 
If we—dogmatically—recognize in Jesus the Innate 
Son of God, respectively God Itself, how then can 
we claim that the Baptism of Jesus was necessary, 
without destroying the Doctrine of the Immaculate 
Conception of Jesus?—Immaculate means: ‘“Spot- 
less, Pure.” 

The Baptism of Jesus was not a matter of nec- 
essity for the purpose of ‘“‘cleansing from sin’, but 
it was necessary for the purpose of the Manifesta- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 105 


tion (1) which should show John the Baptist the one 
who will baptize with the Holy Ghost. Therefore as 
soon the manifestation was given, the mission of 
St. John the Baptist was ended. 

John the Baptist, while baptizing people, had 
frequently seen the Spirit descend upon people, but 
he had never seen it remain upon anybody, and it 
was in this test that he recognized that his cousin 
is the One through whom the Christ should mani- 
fest. The bodily form of the Dove is but a vision, 
a symbol of purity, produced by the Spirit, conse- 
quently John the Baptist did not see the Spirit Christ 
himself, and in our opinion there was perhaps only 
one of the disciples of Jesus who had the Soul-Force 
to see Him, namely John the Evangelist. 

In Baptism one should receive the Spirit, a 
Spiritual Guidance, a Discarnate Ego, and thus 
“becoming led by the Spirit,” receive the Holy Ghost, 
the Essence of God. To receive the Spirit thus 
either by Baptism or by laying on of hands, the one 
baptized “spoke in tongues or phophesied.” (Acts 
XIX. 6. II. 17-19.) 

According to the Gospel of John, John the Baptist 
says nothing about “hearing a voice’, yet if the 
Spirit said something during the manifestation, 
there is no reason to disbelieve the statement made 
by the other Evangelists, for, from a psychic view- 
point, John would have heard it, and thus it appears 
quite correct that the Spirit descending upon Jesus 
said: “Thou art my beloved son, in thee I am well 
pleased,” for Jesus was the spiritual creation of the 
Spirit Christ, although Jesus was man and had the 
Holy Ghost, the Essence of God, through the Spirit 
from the time of his birth. 

Remembering that according to the Scriptural 
Text the Holy Ghost was not yet given, there was 
according to Luke ch. II. 25. a man in Jerusalem 


(1) Matt. III. 15. 


106 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


whose name was Simeon, “upon whom was the Holy 
Ghost,” revealing to him that he should not die be- 
fore he had seen the Lord’s Christ, and he came “‘by 
(led) the Spirit into the temple....” 

Led by the Spirit?— 

The term “Spirit” is used frequently in both 
Testaments, and it may be hard for the Theologians 
“to discern between Spirit and Spirit’, but then this 
is chiefly due to the fact that they do not care to 
learn to understand the Phenomenon. 

When Jehovah “took of the Spirit that was upon 
Moses and gave it unto several elders....when the 
Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied and did 
not cease,” there were others, Eldad and Medad, who 
did not enter the tabernacle, but they too “received 
the Spirit” and prophesied in the camp. And when 
Joshua asked Moses to forbid them, he said: “En- 
viest thou for mysake? Would God that all the 
Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord 
would put His Spirit upon them.” (Num. XI. 24-29). 
.... And the Lord said who shall persuade Ahab 
that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?... 
And there came forth a spirit....and said, I will 
persuade him... .I will bea lying spirit in the mouth 
of all prophets. And he (the Lord) said, thou shalt 
persuade him:.... behold the Lord had put a lying 
spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets.” (I. 
Kings XXII. 20-23.) 

....And when the sons of the prophets....saw 
him (Elisha) they said the spirit of Elijah doth rest 
on Elisha” (II. Kings II. 15.) 

.... ‘And the spirit entered into me when he spake 
unto. me...) (Eg. 1,:2.) 

.... And the spirit took me up and I heard behind 
me a voice of great rushing, saying Blessed be the 
glory of the Lord from this place.... (Ez. III. 12). 
.... The spirit took me up and brought mein a 
vision by the spirit of God into Caldea, to them in 
captivity... ..; (Ez. XT; 24:) 

.... And the spirit of God came upon Saul when he 
heard those tidings and his anger was kindled great- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 107 


ly, and he took a yoke of oxen and hewed them to 
pieces. CE pani o1sG:' Tz) 

If J ehovah i is God, then Jehovah is a Spirit, who, 
according to the scribes of the Old Testament did 
a great number of things which the God of the New 
Testament calls a “Crime’’, things which, when com- 
mitted by mere mortals the Christian clergy would 
lay down as sins punished by God with eternal dam- 
nation. The above references show that whenever 
Jehovah gave his spirit to the people they at once 
prophesied, and did not cease prophesying, that 
Moses like Paul, makes Prophesy the Quintessence 
of the Spirit; but then in the Old Testamental days 
God gave the Prophets also a lying spirit so that 
those whom he wanted to destroy would be led to 
their destruction. This would then prove that Je- 
hovah could not destroy people without “luring them 
into his net with lying spirits’, and this we can not 
call “almighty”, nor can we call it “allknowing’’, 
neither can we call it “allwise and just.” 

No matter how one may try to twist the “‘spirit” 
theologically, these facts cannot be destroyed, nor 
can they be sophistically excused. True, the He- 
brews of those days, not having a “Devil”, had to 
blame their God for the silly things their own mind 
conceived and this we must excuse, but it is incom- 
prehensible to modern thinkers that God, any God, 
could commit such things, and it is positively a theo- 
logical miscarriage to teach and to believe that the 
Living God proclaimed by Christ is a Liar, Deceiver 
and Murderer. 

TO TEACH THAT ONES SALVATION DE- 
PENDS UPON THE BELIEF IN SUCH STORIES 
IS A THEOLOGICAL CRIME! 

In studying the Phenomenon we will find that 
the term “Spirit” is misapplied and misinterpreted, 
therefore, we should not use this term for the pur- 
pose of explaining the Thing that is, for the Spirit 
of God is holy and as such, the Essence of the Most 


108 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Holy which cannot reach man directly, reaching man 
only through “Discarnate Egos.” 

If the clergy study the Phenomenon and “re- 
ceive the Spirit”, hence come into possession of the 
various gifts explained by Paul (Cor. XII) then 
they will learn to discern between Spirits and find 
that God did not commit one of the bloody, deceiving, 
lying, silly and foolish things ascribed to him by 
these scribes; that the Spirit of God, the Essence of 
God, did not even come within five hundred miles 
to these storytellers, that their tales are but the 
result of human minds and —of course—of “‘spirits” 
(Disembodied Egos.) who manifested to and 
through some of the Hebrew Leaders. Finding this 
Truth, the clergy will then begin “to clean out the 
Scriptures” and, discerning between the material 
and the spiritual, they will know the Truth of the 
Phenomenon, hence be freed by that Truth. 

Is it not peculiar, to say the least, that one 
should readily believe that there were among the 
Gentiles of that time people who had visions, talked 
with angels (men in bright clothing) and were 
guided:-(led) by them, denying at the same time the 
same things happening to day ?—Is it not extremely 
peculiar to believe that the Apostles went into 
trance, while one at the same time denies that such 
is done to day, or if one admits such, ascribes it to 
the Devil ?—Is it not peculiar, indeed, to believe that 
the Spirits (spiritual guidances of the disciples) ad- 
vised Paul not to go to Jerusalem, (1) that the four 
daughters of Philip the Evangelist prophesied, and 
a certain prophet, Agabus, foretold Paul that he will 
be made prisoner by the Jews and handed over to 
the Gentiles, while at the same time denying that all 
these things still happen and did happen, before our 
era, the world over?— 

True, the so called Christian is prone to say: 


(1) Acts. XXI. 4-11. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 109 


these things were done by the Holy Ghost, that the 
Scriptures speak of such things done by Evil Spirits, 
by Divining Spirits. Can this so called Christian 
discern between the things ascribed to the Holy 
Ghost and those done by the “Unholy Ghost?’ If 
this so called Christian has the Spirit of God, where 
are the Gifts which the Spirit bestows ?— 

The Spirit of God has become rather chimerical 
in the Christian Church and manifests itself chiefly 
in the sign of the dollar, in hate and hypocrisy as 
well as in the Bible-Worship. 

Matthew, Mark and John, refering to the Bap- 
tism of Jesus, use the term “Spirit of God”, while 
Luke states that the “Holy Ghost” descended. This 
is confusing in a way, for the Spirit of God, which 
is holy, can be interpreted as being the inner sub- 
stance of God, yet one cannot define God, hence one 
cannot speak of an inner and outer substance of God, 
but one can speak of the Spirit of God as emanating 
from God. The Holy Spirit—Vibration of God— 
(Holy Ghost) is the Spirit created by God, be this 
now in the sense of pre-existent beings (if one may 
term them “beings’’), scripturally called “Spirits, 
Angels’, or in the sense of “‘Soul-Minds’”’ (Discar- 
nate Egos—Spiritualized Souls of former Men and 
Women). Neither Spirits nor Angels can come into 
contact with man, consequently the Spirit of God 
is a spiritualized former human being, and this in 
contrast to the ‘‘Disembodied Ego” of the Material 
Spirit world, which represents the Spirit of the 
Earth earthy, and as such has not the “Breath of 
Life,’ hence is not of the Family of God in that sense 
of the word. 

In the Gospel of Matthew, Mark and John the 
proper term is used, for it was the “Spirit of God” 
which descended and remained upon Jesus. John 
the Baptist testifies to this himself, and this Spirit 
of God was Christ, the Messiah that came from 
above, in contrast to others who came from below, 
from man’s own atmosphere. 

The Spirit Christ was the Word which was 


110 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


made Flesh in the contact with the brain of Jesus, 
and the Word is the Expression of God which was 
in the Beginning and which was with God and is 
God. A word without expression remains thought, 
therefore the Thought coming from God can become 
audible only to man through the Spirit of God which 
is the Agency between God and man, and the Spirit 
of God—in order to achieve this—must work 
through the human brain, which, as stated before, 
becomes the Medium through which the Word can be 
heard by others who are not in vibratory harmony 
with the Spirit. 

It is noteworthy that only Matthew reports that 
John forbid him, and that Jesus answered ‘“‘Suffer 
it to be so, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all 
righteousness,” and that only Mark claims that Jesus 
said “‘He that believeth and is baptised shall be sav- 
ed, but he that believeth not shall be damned’; 
Matthew stating only that Jesus ordained his disci- 
ples to teach and to baptize, while John knows noth- 
ing of even this. Not even Luke reports these things 
in the Acts (ch. I.) where he relates the command- 
ments Jesus gave his apostles before he departed. 
To use John ch. XII. v. 48 as a parallel to Mark ch. 
XVI. v. 16, means to throw overboard al! logic, for 
Christ said: ‘‘He that rejected me and receiveth not 
my words, hath One that judgeth him, the word that 
I have spoken, the same shall judge him on the last 
day.” To judge one not necessarily means to damn 
one, and the “last day” means the day of ones death 
and the day on which the second Resurrection takes 
place, for during these periods the words of Christ . 
will prove themselves true and the Realization of 
this Truth constitutes a “Judgment.” 

If Baptism with water had been considered by 
Christ to be the first or second necessity to salva- 
tion, Jesus would have baptized with water himself. 
His own Baptism was not performed for the purpose 
of “saving him from damnation” but was necessary 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 111 


for the purpose of establishing the fact of “Christ’s 
Appearance upon earth.” 

We read in John ch. III. v. 22-26 and ch. IV. v 
1-2: “After these things came Jesus and his disci- 
ples into the land of Judea, and there he tarried with 
them and baptized. ...And they came unto John and 
said to him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond the 
Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold same 
baptizeth, and all men come to him....When there- 
fore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard 
that Jesus made and baptized more people than John 
(though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disci- 
ples), he left Judea.....” 

The story shows that while Jesus tarried with 
his disciples in John the Baptist’s territory, the bap- 
tizing performed there by his disciples brought on 
jealousy in the hearts of John’s disciples, who to 
all appearances not only saw in Jesus’ success a great 
force of competition, but also that they believed in 
wholesale baptismals irrespective of the inner con- 
dition of those baptized by them, and we may well 
assume that their jealousy prompted them to accuse 
Jesus of baptizing, that they had not the slightest 
idea of the “Christ Manifestation”, although John 
the Baptist testified to it and they admitted that 
fact. They simply could not comprehend it. Is it 
then such an awful thing for people living in the 
20th. century not to be able to comprehend this is- 
sue, if it was hard for the disciples of John the Bap- 
tist to understand it?—Is the failure to comprehend 
it such a spiritual crime that Damnation must follow 
in its wake?— 

Let us not forget that John the Baptist while 
in prison sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask 
him: “Are thou the that should come, or look we for 
an other?’ (1).—Why should John doubt? Did he 
not see it with his own eyes and testify to it? Here 


(1)  Matth. XI. 3. Luke, VII. 19. 


112 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


we can most certainly not blame “human nature” 
for the doubt, because John had still with him the 
spirit who told him how to recognize the One. 
Neither Mark nor John knows anything about this, 
and it should seem that John would be the one who 
would know about it, unless he did not think it worth 
the while to report it. Even so, one cannot combine 
it with John the Baptist’s position, and this seems 
to make the account false. 

Baptism with water is an outward sign of re- 
pentence since that time and it became an “Iniatia- 
tion into the Church” as it was among the Jews, a 
symbol which in itself not necessarily leads to salva- 
tion. Baptism, be it by Immersion, Washing with 
Water, Sprinkling with Water or by Anointing with 
Oil, or by simply applying the given formula with- 
out the use of Water or Oil, is but an outer form, 
during the application of which the one baptized 
should have created the receptive mood to receive the 
Spirit of God, a Discarnate Ego, asa guidance 
through life, and thus become “led by the Spirit,” 
hence Paul asked in Acts XIX. 2: “Have ye received 
the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”’—Paul did not 
baptize with Water, but following the advice and ex- 
ample of Jesus, he baptized with the Holy Ghost, and 
all those who received the Essence of God “spake 
with tongues and phophesied” (2). 

“And it came to pass, that on one of those 
days, as he taught the people in the temple, and 
preached the gospel, the chief priests and the 
scribes came upon him with the elders, and 
spake unto him, saying, tell us, by what authori- 
ty doest thou these things? or who is it that gave 
thee this authority? And he answered and 
said unto them, I will also ask you one thing; 
and answer me: “THE BAPTISM OF JOHN, 
WAS IT FROM HEAVEN, OR MEN?’— 
(Luke XX. v. 1-8.) 


(2) Acts. II. 4.. 17-19-38 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 113 


Here we see very clearly that Jesus himself 
makes quite a distinction between the Baptism 
which is given by “Man” and that which comes from 
Heaven, from the Spiritual Spheres, giving us full 
knowledge in regard to John’s Testimony of the 
true baptism, which was also given by the Apostles. 
It should then become very clear that the Baptism 
is in itself a Phenomena, a Spiritual Phenomena, 
and as such not a Mystery if we learn to understand 
the Laws under which such did happen and still 
happens. 

Scripturally it is well known that the chief 
‘priests, scribes and elders of the Synagogue claimed 
Jesus to be possessed by the Devil, that they ascrib- 
ed his work as well as that of his followers to Satan, 
much the same way as the Christian Theologians, 
Scribes and Elders have been( and still are) as- 
cribing the present day Manifestation of the Spirit 
to the same source. 


114 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


TEMPTATION 


Next of importance to our issue is the “Temp- 
tation of Jesus’; but before analyzing the scriptural 
text we shall quote a few points in regard to “Satan” 

“Devil or Satan designates in the Old and New 
Testament a mighty Spirit of Evil, who during un- 
told ages ruled over a Kingdom of evil Spirits, and 
as such is in constant and restless opposition to God. 
This Belief was gradually developed in the Jewish 
mind and it is beyond all questions that it acquired 
clearness and prominence through extra-national 
influences. 

The older Hebrews who lived before the Baby- 
Jonian Captivity—judging from the silence of the 
Scriptures—knew nothing, and certainly taught 
nothing, of evil spirits in the latter sense, i.e. of Be- 
ings separated from God, who were evil in the es- 
sence of their nature and worked evil only. Moral 
Evil was rather looked upon as properly the act of 
man, Physical Evil, or Adversity, on the other hand, 
as punishment merited through sin and inflicted by 
a just and holy God, who was thus necessarily con- 
ceived as the source of all calamity. The Angels 
who foretold God’s purposes and executed his will, 
however great might be the physical Evil they oc- 
casioned, are never accused of moral Evil. Even 
in the Mosaic account of the Seduction of Eve, there 
is nothing to induce us to believe that the author 
regarded the Serpent other than ‘“‘the most subtle 
of all the beasts of the field’, or that he meant to 
conceal under so plain a statement an illusion to 
Satan. It is probable, however, that at some early 
period of their history the popular faith of the Jews, 
partly divorcing itself from its grand religious con- 
ceptions of the Living God and, lapsing—as has 
everywhere been the case with popular faiths—into 
petty superstitions, had become familiar with the 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 115 


idea of certain fearful unearthy beings haunting the 
wilderness, similar to the fauns and satyres of 
Greece, who might form a conecting link in the lat- 
ter development of an actual Demonism,. Traces of 
this are clearly visible in the Pentateuch. The word 
“Selrim” occuring in Leviticus XVII. v. 7., which the 
translators of the Bible rentered. ‘Devils’? means 
only “Hairy Ones”. The Egyptians worshipped the 
“He-Goat” and the Hebrews partook, as we know, 
of their idolatry, therefore Moses in this verse for- 
bidding them to commit this sin in the future says: 
“They shall no more offer their sacrifices to Seirim’’, 
i.e. to the Egyptian He-Goat. 

The development of Demonism was materially 
furthered during and after the Babylonian Capti- 
vity by Medo-Persian influences. In those canoni- 
cal books of the Old Testament which belong in their 
present form to the post-exilian period, i.e. the period 
subsequent to the Exile, the Jewish conceptions of 
Angels becomes more definite. ‘They possess differ- 
ent ranks, names and specific offices. They are 
tutelary guardians and helpers of particular lands 
and peoples, but are everywhere in absolute depend- 
ance of God. And now we meet for the first time 
with an Angel called ‘Satan,’ who, however still 
figures as a “Minister of God” and along with others 
appears in heaven before the throne of Jehovah, but 
with the function assigned to him of Seducer and 
Accuser. It is he who (I. Chron. XXI. v. 1) stirrs 
up David to number the people, while in the older 
Hebrew version (II. Sam. XXIV. v. 1) the same act 
is attributed to an angry God, the conception of 
Satan not having then been clearly—if at all—pre- 
sented itself to the Hebrew mind. 

In Job Satan throws suspicion on the piety of 
Job, and in Zacharias III. v. 1, he is represented as 
“resisting the Angel of God and as false accuser of 
the priest Joshua.” As yet, however, an evil nature 
is not expressly ascribed to him, but, what is the 


116 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


same, it is assumed that he takes pleasure in active 
Evil. 

It is purely arbitrary and untextual to inter-— 
polate Isaiah XIV. v. 12. “How thou art fallen 
from heaven, o Lucifer, son of the morning” so as 
to force these words to refer to the fall of the Devil, 
or to determine from them his name. 

In the Apocrypha, of which only a small part is 
Palestinian, the rest being either Chaldean-Persian 
(as Tobias and Baruch), or Egypto-Alexandrian 
(as Wisdom) in its origin, the older Hebrew doct- 
rine of misfortune comes from the Angels of Jeho- 
vah, and is so to speak dismembered, and demons or 
evil spirits—in the New Testamental sense of the 
term—are mentioned for the first time (in Tobias 
and Baruch frequently) as authors of Calamities. 
According to these writings the evil spirits dwell 
like the older Hebrews hobgoblins, in waste places, 
but associated themselves for the injury and de- 
struction of man, enter into them as tormentors and 
can be expelled only by magical or mysterious means. 
To this class of Beings the Heathen Deities were 
reckoned to belong. But even here is no mention of 
an organization or kingdom, or prince of demons. 

The first trace of the Devil proper (and in all 
probability springing from a foreign source) shows 
itself in the Book of Wisdom (II. 24.) in relation to 
the Seduction of Eve, where it is said that through 
the Devil the necessity of death has come into the 
world. 

In the period between the close of the Apocry- 
pha and the appearance of Jesus the Jewish ideas of 
Angels received an extensive development. This 
Angelology and Demonology, wholly foreign to the 
Old Hebrew Religion, was derived in all its essential 
characteristics from the system of Zoroaster, with 
which the Jews had become familiar by the long and 
close intercourse with the Persian Empire during 
the Exile and subsequently. 

It was, ‘however, impossible to transfer the 
Dualism of Zoroaster into a creed so purely monoth- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 117 


eistic as that of the Jews, which would have destroy- 
ed the foundation on which their entire history rest- 
ed. Two Beings, equally eternal, equally powerful, 
was an idea which no Hebrew—mindful of the glori-. 
ous deliverance of his forefathers out of the land of 
Egypt, of the Law given amidst the Thunder of 
Sinai, of the Mannah in the Wilderness, of the Tri- 
umphs in Canaan and the golden Psalms of David— 
could for one moment entertain. But on the other 
hand, now that as a nation the Jews became weak 
and of little account, hemmed in and crushed by 
mighty and advancing empires, no conception could 
seem more true, or prove more.consolatory, than that 
which permitted them to attribute their misfortunes 
to the agency of a demoniacal race, headed by a po- 
tentate only inferior to Jehovah himself. 

The conflict among the Jews prevented their 
ideas of Devil and Demons from obtaining—in spite 
of their broad diffusion—a dogmatic and systematic 
stability. The populace and Pharisees believed fer- 
vidly in the existence of such evil spirits, but their 
conceptions had not only the heat, but ail the con- 
fusedness of superstition. 

Thus the Devil became firmly seated in the 
popular imagination as a “Fallen Angel’, but as yet 
there is no hint of his having seduced his followers 
from their allegiance of Jehovah, or of their having 
fallen at the same time. This idea first appears in 
the Book of Revelations, ch. XII, where mention is 
made of a great war in heaven between Michael 
and his angels on one hand and the Devil and his 
angels on the other hand. 

Concerning the fall of the Devil and his angels 
opinions were long diverse. Some suppose that it 
occured through envy, others through pride, and 
others again through concupiscence and excess, Some 
placed it before, and others after the seduction of 
Eve, by the serpent. 

At first the Christians saw in the Death of 
Jesus a Sacrifice and his blood a prepitiatory power, 
but soon after their thoughts reverted to the other 


118'IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


scriptural representation of an actual victory over 
the Devil, a restoration of the Divine Image in man, 
whence the dogma of the Devil developed. 

The Devil was actually deprived only of Christ- 
ians, in all other men he dwelled and ruled through 
the force of Original Sin. In consequence of this 
belief he was formally banished (until the 3rd. cy.) 
not only from ‘‘demoniacs, but also from. all converts 
from Judaism and Heathenism to Christianity, and 
when the practice of Baptism had shaped itself 
into the dogma that it was a “preliminary to holi- 
ness,” exorcism or “driving out the Devil” became 
a Christian Art, exercised on all new born children. 
Those who died unbaptized were sent to Hell for al- 
though potentially Christ’s, the Church had not yet 
rescued them. from their satanic master, by the ap- 
pointed rite. 

In the 8th, century the belief was that no Chris- 
tian, not even the weakest, could be forced by the 
Devil to do evil. Thus did this great, originally 
Persico-Judaic Belief on- the Devil spread itself 
through all Christian lands.” (Chamber’s Enc.) 

Anyone believing in a personal God must, of 
necessity, also believe in a personal Devil, and thus 
establish for himself a cause for the Duality in man. 
Believing in the existence of these two Personalities 
one must, of course, reason out the cause of their 
existence, but since it is beyond human comprehen- 
sion to fix a cause for the existence of a God, the 
idea that God is pre-existent is readily accepted as 
a fact because there seems to be Something within 
man trying to prove that God exists. The same way 
the existence of a Devil seems to try to prove itself 
also. Even if we reason that one tribe or race bor- 
rowed these ideas one from the other, interpolating 
them until they fit themselves into their respective 
national or racial beliefs, someone must have had the 
original idea, and this original idea must have had 
a cause, and while fear and superstition inspired by 
that cause became transmission and _ interpreta- 
tion of that cause, some kind of experience must 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 119 


have been upholding the ideas conceived. This ex- 
perience must have been universal and must have 
continued to be so, otherwise it could not have evolv- 
ed further, unless we assume _ that these beliefs 
were fostered by a priestcraft in power. Even so, 
a first cause must have been the foundaticn for such 
ideas and beliefs. 

Man in the natural (animal) state cannot dis- 
cern between good and bad, Morals and Ethics be- 
ing a matter of Evolution of Conduct, hence the 
knowledge of good and bad belongs'to the period of 
Spiritual Evolution; but Spiritual Evolution in its 
beginning is still material enough to conceive the 
idea that good and bad have a common source, hence 
come from God. ‘This idea must even theologically 
be admitted to be correct, for God being allknowing, 
allwise and almighty allowed Evil to come into ex- 
istence by making it possible that Spirits or Angels 
created by Him, could do wrong and thereby become 
hostile to His plan. 

Would it not be wise to ask: “Why did God not 
guard Eden with a Cherubim before the Fall, saving 
Himself thus all the trouble arising from the Ser- 
pent’s presence?” 

If Adam and Eve had the gift of the “Freedom 
of the Will’, could not God have willed their down- 
fall the same way He willed the destruction of Ahab, 
ordaining a Spirit to ‘persuade them, to lie to 
them?’ If God was capable of such an action at 
the time of Ahab, one can rightly assume He did 
the same things long before Abraham’s time. 

The Devil-Idea is based upon a Phantom which 
sprung from. the misunderstood and misinterpreted 
experiences of the: Ancient “Ghost-Hunters’”’. 

This Phantom, while rightly called Evil, lents 
itself more readily to Personification than the God- 
Idea because, producing fear, it allows more play- 
room for the undeveloped mind to create mind pict- 
ures easily associated with fearinspiring creatures 
dwelling in dark places. The God-Idea, on the other 
hand, must work itself out more in a direct beneficial 


120 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


way, although it would of necessity contain a puni- 
tive mood of the Deity, and so, while the Devil-Idea 
sprung from the misunderstood materia! phenome- 
non and gradually took on the grotesque forms of 
phantastic creatures, personifying itself thus, the 
God-Idea had to build itself in a similar way, pro- 
ducing on hand of the misunderstood spiritual phen- 
omenon a Deity which looks like man. arriving in 
the earliest stages of spiritual development upon a 
Sophism known under the term “Hermaphrodite.” 
Studying the phenomenon as it presents itself 
to day we find that there is a “blending of the Ego”, 
a Unit of the male and female, which makes it ap- 
pear as if both, the male and female Discarnate (or 
' Disembodied) Ego—while distinctly different in 
form and feeling (expression)—would at times 
melt into One, making it in the beginning of the 
study difficult to understand, acting as if either a 
male or female impersonation would take place. The 
fact, however, is that under the laws of nature as 
well as under the divine laws male and female do 
not separate, that both are—under the law of at- 
traction—linked more one with the other in the Af- 
ter-Life than they were before, that for this reason 
the phenomenon no matter how spirituelle it may be, 
manifests still outwardly in male and female, and is | 
therefore “hermaphrodite” in character. The same 
is the case, of course,in that phenomenon which 
manifests itself in a more physical way and which 
takes in all material manifestations, hence we speak 
of Evil as such exists upon earth being transplanted 
into that After-Life known under the term ‘““Common 
Resurrection” or “Resurrection to Condemnation”, 
an Evil appearing only in the mind of man; conse- 
quently if we say that the existence of a Devil seems 
to prove itself in this that there seems to be Some- 
thing within man trying to prove that existence, we 
mean that there is somewhere a Council of Evil much 
the same way as. there is somewhere a Council of 
Good; but since Evil is only a natural (mental) con- 
dition common in all undeveloped minds, this Evil 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 121 


is neither pre-existent nor a disqualification in the 
character of pre-existent beings called Spirits or 
Angels, for there is neither indirect nor direct Evil 
in God, neither can such exist or come into existence 
even in spiritualized soul-minds. 

Evil is a mental condition, a natural condition 
of the natural man, and since death does not change 
man mentally at once, and in many cases makes the 
mental condition worse, due to the desires, and 
brings out the electro-magnetic force of the mind 
by studying psychic laws little known to man, Dis- 
embodied Egos can and do use their knowledge in 
accordance with their desires for their own selfish 
purposes. These purposes may be good as far as 
the individual code of Morals of the Disembodied and 
Embodied Ego is concerned, and yet evil from a 
spiritual point of view, hence they are classified 
more specifically in regard to their source, which 
is either sinister, divining or unclean (sexual). 
Nevertheless the source is human, for it is a former 
human being. 

In God, whether we call God “Jehovah” or by. 
any other name, can be no Evil, consequently all! de- 
ceptions, lies and murders ascribed to God by the 
Old Testamental scribes are simply the result of 
false thinking and so is the belief in a Personal Devil 
as a Fallen Angel, for all evil existing in the lower 
planes of Life is the result of man’s thinking and 
while it is written that “ye are Gods’, the thoughts 
and actions of man have plainly written into the 
pages of profane and ecclesiastic history that “ye 
are Devils”, and just as the Kingdom of Heaven is 
within man, so is also the Kingdom of Hell within 
man, which transplanted into the Other World re- 
flects its own Evils upon man’s mind, thus creating 
not only new evils but also more refined evils. 

The Ruler of Hell (earthplane and its surround- 
ing atmosphere) is man’s mind, which personified 
is man in the body as well as man out of the body, 
sitting upon high places, forming principalities in 
the embodied as well as in the disembodied world, 


122 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


and the Unit thereof is the Power of the Prince of 
the Air, the Mind-Unit of the Sinister, Divining and | 
Unclean Thought, the Unit of the Natural Principle 
misapplied and misused by man. 

The temptation of Jesus as scripturally record- 
ed raises a number of questions and we find again 
that Matthew and Luke know the conversation 
which is supposed to have taken place between Jesus 
and the Devil, while Mark refrains from going into 
lengthy details and John is silent about the whole 
matter. 

From a scriptural viewpoint the Temptation of 
Jesus is of importance, yet John, who was the closest 
of all disciples to Jesus, reports nothing of it. It is 
hardly logic to presume that Jesus told anyone what 
happened during the forty days and forty nights, un- 
less we assume that because John was his beloved 
disciple, Jesus may have told him. One can hardly 
imagine that. he spoke to his mother about it, be- 
cause it appears from the Scriptures that she com- 
prehended very little of these things, although she 
received the Annunciation and was overshadowed by 
the Holy Ghost, unless we assume that the respective 
Evangelists for reasons of their own forgot all about 
her. Assuming this, we can further assume that 
Joseph and Mary, whom even Jesus does not mention 
nor refer to, lived a quiet life and had so to speak— 
nothing in particular to do anymore with the life and 
works of Jesus their son. Even so, these reports 
must have been based upon current conceptions held 
by some of the first Christians and contain—in our 
opinion—a truth experienced not only by Jesus, but 
also by Matthew, Mark, Luke and others, while John, 
having made similar experiences, did not write about 
them, knowing only too well that they could be un- 
derstood only by those who are acquainted with the 
phenomenon, for he says in the last verse of his gos- 
pel: “And there are also many other things Jesus 
did, which, if they should be written every one, I 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 123 


suppose that even the world itself could not contain 
the books that should be written.”’ 

Temptations are a common experience the world 
over even where a “material mediumship” is con- 
cerned, and during the development of a “spiritual 
mediumship” these temptations take on a more seri- 
ous aspect chiefly because of ones own nature and 
mental stubborness. The apostles were fully aware 
of this(1). Understanding the phenomenon and 
its effect upon the human mind, we not only uphold 
the scriptural record of the temptation, but also de- 
fend it, yet we are not at all in harmony with the 
orthodox viewpoint which is based upon literal in- 
terpretation and lacks all psychic knowledge, while 
our treatise is based upon experiences made, and so 
we claim that the Temptation of Jesus did not nec- 
essarily take place outside the walls of his abode. 

Matthew states (ch. IV. 1-11): “Then was 
Jesus led up of the spirit to be tempted by the Devil. 
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, 
he afterwards an hungered. And when the tempter 
came to him, he said: If thou be the son of God, com- 
mand these stones to be made bread. But he ans- 
wered and said: It -is written. man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth of 
the mouth of God. Then the Devil taketh him up 
into the Holy City and setteth him an a pinnacle of 
the temple and said to him: If thou be the son of God, 
cast thyself down, for it is written He shall give His 
angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands 
they shall bear thee up last any time thou dash thy 
foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him: It is 
written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 
Again the Devil taketh him into an exceeding high 
mountain and shewed him, all the kingdoms of the 
world and the glory of them, and said unto him: All 
these things will I give thee if thou fall down and 


(1) I. Cor. X. 13. Hebr. IV. 15. 


124 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


worship me. Then said Jesus unto him: Get thee 
hence Satan, for it is written: Thou shalt worship 
the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. 
Then the Devil leaveth him and behold the angels 
came and ministered unto him.” 

Mark states (ch. I. 12-18.) : “And immediately 
the spirit driveth him into the wilderness and he was 
there in the wilderness forty days tempted by Satan, 
and was with wild beasts, and the angels ministered 
unto him.”’ 

Luke (ch. IV. 1-3) corresponds with Matthew, 
but leaves out the contents of verse 2 and adds: ““And 
when the Devil had ended all the temptations, he de- 
parted from him for a season.”’ 

The critical mind will ask: If Jesus is the son 
of God, respectively God, the Devil must have known 
this, hence he must have known that he could not 
tempt him; or: what spirit was it that led or drove 
him into the wilderness ?—Being, according to Luke 
(ch. IV. 1.) full of the Hioly Ghost, the spirit that 
Jed him was the spirit which descended and remained 
upon him. Further more the critical mind may 
ask: why did not Jesus say at once ‘“‘Satan get thee 
ane me,’ and thereby stop all further interfer- 
ence ? 

In the symbolic language the term “to be led by 
the spirit” means “to be guided by a Supernal Ego,” 
while to be “driven”? means to be forced by either a 
Supernal Ego or by a Disembodied Ego against ones 
will and desire. In being led or guided the condi- 
tion has a supernal purpose; the being driven can 
have a supernal purpose, but in most cases the re- 
sult will be mundane and sensuous, therefore the ex- 
pression driven as used in Mark is wholy out of 
place and it is very doubtful that Mark used this ex- 
pression. 

“Wilderness” denotes a state of Affliction and 
Desolation. “Stones” imply Foundation of the 
Divine Work as well as a Cause of Stumbling. “Hun- 
ger” means a Great Spiritual Desire, while ‘Temple’ 
means the Body as the Dwelling of the Soul, hence 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 125 


the “Pinnacle of the Temple in the Holy City” refers 
to the Highest Spiritual Attitude. To “cast down 
from it’ means to lower oneself from this attitude 
to the material condition of the mind, which sophis- 
tically appears to be accomplished without “dashing 
the foot against a stone’, i.e. without stumbling over 
the Foundations of the Divine Work, because of the 
Sublimity of the mind of the Masters of the higher 
spheres of the material spiritworld. The allusion 
to Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12, is forced and without 
sense in connection with the theme, hence refuted 
by Jesus himself, and points directly to the Alexand- 
rian (Occult) ideas of the time. ‘“Mountain” denotes 
Strength in reference to the Material and Spiritual 
Kingdom, meaning that just as the Kingdom of 
Heaven is within man so is the Material Kingdom 
(Hell) also within man. “Kingdom” means the 
Power of the Mind. The “Beasts” in Mark denote 
“Animal Nature’, respectively the Thoughts produc- 
ed by it, which are Living Creatures and Tyrannical 
Powers either in form of animal actions or in form 
of critical and sophistic ideas. 

We find thus the Temptation of Jesus to be 
first a Mental Process of his own, a weeding out of 
thoughts which hindered the proper development 
(unfoldment) of the Spirit; second we see in it an 
attempt of interfence by a “‘sublime, yet subtle Dis- 
embodied Ego” either for the purpose of control or 
for the purpose of setting Jesus’ previously received 
spiritual teaching to test. We should learn to un- 
derstand that from his childhood until his baptism 
he was under the guardianship of Minor Spiritual 
Teachers, the tutelage of which prepared him for the 
coming of the Spirit Christ, hence anyone thorough- 
ly understanding the phenomenon and the work of 
the Spirit finds the theosophistic idea that Jesus re- 
ceived his knowledge in India, not only absurd, but 
a slanderous attempt to deprave his character and 
to corrupt his teaching, as well as to make a lie of 
an evident Truth. 

From a psychic point of view Jesus could not 


126 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


fall, because of the teaching received by him and 
more so, because he was led by the Spirit Christ, 
who as the Word of God can neither tempt nor be 
tempted. All material thoughts produced by him- 
self or suggested from without by a “lower force” 
could under the circumstances not affect him other- 
wise but in a temporary way, for Jesus was human, 
yet the effect could not be anything but that of ar- 
gument. Therefore this which theologically is call- 
ed the Temptation of Jesus was not a matter of the 
Devil, but was a very simple process of mental puri- 
fication after the Baptism established the fact that 
Fi is he through whom the Spirit Christ should man- 
ifest. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 127 


JESUS—THE SON OF GOD 


“Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his 
mother called Mary and his brethren James and 
Joses and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are 
they not all with us? Whence then hath this man 
all these things?” (Matth. XIII. 54-56. Mark VI. 
2-3.) 

One of the greatest difficulties confronting 
Orthodoxy is the scriptural fact that the kinsmen, 
brethren of Jesus, did not believe in him, that even 
his mother appears to have forgotten the things told 
her by the angel. The people of his own country 
and hometown did not believe in him, although they 
marveled about “his wisdom and mighty works.” 
Had he been in India for any length of time, these 
townspeople would not have asked: ‘‘Whence hath 
this man all these things?” That his townspeople 
did not believe in him is nothing to wonder about, 
but that his own family should be recorded as not 
to have taken him seriously, although they must 
have known from Joseph and Mary as well as from 
their relatives Zacharias and Elizabeth the entire 
account in regard to his birth and mission, must give 
even the orthodox Christian a severe shock, and if 
ener es at all, shake his belief to very fundament- 
als. 

We read in Mark III. 20-21: “And the multi- 
tude cometh together again, so that they could not 
so much as eat bread. And when his kinsmen heard 
of it, they went out to lay hold of him, for they said 
he is beside himself.’’ 

In John VII. 5 we read: “For neither did his 
brethren believe in him’. Jesus, of course was a- 
ware of this, for we may well assume that his kins- 
men, thinking him to be beside himself, attempted 
to stop him more than once, because to all appear- 
ances to them the “Spiritual Issue” was lost, and 


128 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


knowing by experience the result of the phenomenon 
on the human mind, they simply judged him to be 
“temporarily insane’, a verdict so often issued in 
our present age. The populace of that time, as far 
as it was under the rule of the Pharisees, saw in 
almost all manifestations the work of the Devil, 
while among others more or less the Alexandrian 
Ideas prevailed, hence the unbelief of his brethren, 
while astonishing, is after all nothing extraordin- 
ary, proving—at least to us—that to them the An- 
nunciation to their mother as well as to Zacharias 
meant but a common occurance under the psychic 
laws, with which they most certainly were acquaint- 
ed, for we can hardly presume that there were no 
further manifestations in the family of Joseph and 
Mary. Furthermore we must not forget that when 
the Apostles received the Holy Ghost, some people 
claimed that ‘“‘they are full of new wine.” 

Paul himself uses the expression beside our- 
selves, saying: ‘“For whether we be beside ourselves, 
it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is for your 
cause.” (II.Cor. V. 13.) The term “beside one- 
self’ means “to be not oneself”, and since no one 
through whom the Spirit manifests is himself during 
the manifestation, such one is properly speaking “‘be- 
side himself,” but not “out of himself”. Being 
mentally subdued by the Spirit who thus makes use 
of the respective person’s vocal cords, becoming 
thereby “‘audible” to man, that person temporarily 
ceases to be himself. 

In the beginning of the development (whether 
this produces a Re-Incarnation or an Incarnation) a 
mental disorder takes place and the time referred to 
above must then--of necessity-—be termed the period 
of the psychic development of Jesus. There can be no 
doubt that these references belong to the period 
prior to his baptism, for after the baptism took 
place, or shortly before it took place, the mental 
equilibrium of Jesus was fully re-established as 
otherwise he would not have been able to receive 
the Spirit Christ, respectively the Spirit Christ 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 129 


would not have been able to manifest through him. 

In the unbelief of his kinsmen we find the key 
to the following: 

“IT came not to send peace but the sword. For 
Iam come to seta man at variance against his 
father, and the daughter against her mother, and 
the daughter in law against her mother in law. And 
a man’s foes shall be of his own household. He that 
loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy 
of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than 
me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his 
cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 
He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that 
loseth his life for my sake shall find it. He that 
receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me 
- receiveth him that sent me.” (Matth. X. 34-40.) 

These utterances, ascribed to Jesus, but spoken 
through him by Christ, are based upon direct ex- 
periences made by Jesus and based upon the most 
fundamental Truth. If we study the phenomenon 
and its result, we learn to understand that the Spirit 
Christ did not come to send peace, because He clash- 
es with the Spirit of the Earth, hence with the 
Natural Principle; consequently with man’s think- 
ing. Paradise lost can, therefore, not be reestab- 
lished in man as long as man’s mind is ruled by 
mundane things, and so we will find that the Work 
of the Spirit of God must of necessity bring the 
Sword, respectively a “Judgment,” within the family 
or circle of friends, who as souls made of the dust 
of the ground are involuntarily creating an opposi- 
tion toit. If they are acquainted with the “material 
manifestation” their opposition is then as much de- 
veloped as is the opposition produced in orthodox 
circles. The Human Race is, by its own nature, op- 
posed to the Work of the Spirit of God, and there 
are even to day thousands of cases the world over 
which not only prove that the Spirit of God works 
to day in the same way as in ancient times, but which 
also prove that those who receive the Spirit are be- 
side themselves, and charged either with being pos- 


130 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


sessed by Devils and Demons, or declared insane. 

Such cases are so plentiful that one cannot help 
wondering where-from the respective accusers re- 
ceived their authority to judge such people, most 
certainly not from the Scriptures, and if they do 
claim the Scriptures as their authority, they simply 
do not know the Scriptures and belong to the class 
of the Pharisees. 

The division produced by the Spirit Christ is 
due only to man’s own stubborness and false inter- 
pretations which produced the various creeds, every 
one of which misses the Truth of the Phenomenon, 
consequently can not fathom the Work of the Spirit 
per se. : 

We must learn to discern between this which 
Jesus said and that which the Spirit Christ spoke 
through him. For instance it is erroneous to be- 
lieve that Jesus said to his mother: ‘‘Woman, what 
have I to do with thee? Mine hour it not yet come.”’ 
(1) Here we should clearly perceive that the 
Spirit preparing the miracle answered Mary, and 
not Jesus, for it was not Jesus who did these things, 
but the Spirit who manifested through him, and 
without the Spirit Jesus could do nothing. It was 
thus the Spirit Christ who said: “‘God is my Father” 
and who claimed “I and my Father are one,” al- 
though Jesus could have used the same words, sig- 
nifying then that he, Jesus, and the Spirit Christ, his 
“Spiritual Father,” are one whenever the Spirit 
Christ manifested through him, becoming thereby 
one with God also (in harmony with God}. This is 
strongly brought out in John VI. 46.: “Not that any 
man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, 
he hath seen the Father.” That this has no refer- 
ence to God becomes clear if we remember that it is 
written in John I. 18.: “No man hath seen God at 
any time....”? and in I. John IV. 12 the same words. 


(1) John II. 4. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 131 


are repeated. From a psychic experience it is also 
very clear that ‘no man hath seen the Father, save 
he which is of God,’’ because only the one who is in 
the Vibration of God could have seen the “Father,” 
could have seen the Spirit Christ. The ‘Vibration 
of God’ means here not merely the vibration of a 
highly developed Discarnate Ego, it means the Vibra- 
tion of the Power of the Highest Spiritual Ego that 
ever came into contact with the brain of man. In our 
opinion Jesus of Nazareth was the only one who was 
able to see the Spirit Christ, although there is a pos- 
sibility that John, the beloved disciple, may have 
seen Christ. 
| When the Spirit Christ said through Jesus: 
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and 
he saw it and was glad’, the Jews at once looked at 
this statement from their own material viewpoint 
and said: “Thou are not yet fifty years old and hast 
thou seen Abraham?” (John VIII. 56-57.) Christ’s 
answer: “Verily, I say unto you, before Abraham 
was I am” they could, of course, not comprehend at 
all, because they believed that Jesus talked to them, 
hence they attempted to stone him, settling thus all 
arguments. (John VII. 47- 48.) 

When the Spirit Christ said: “Before Abraham 
was I am’, he did not mean that He was personally 
in existence before Abraham’s time; the J am means 
God, Jehovah, i.e. the Spiritual Principle, respec- 
tively the Word or Logos, which in Abraham laid 
again the foundation for the Higher Understand- 
ing of Life(1), although—perhaps—still in a crude 
way, for in Abraham, like in Moses and most of the 
Prophets, physical force was still the strongest part 
of the Phenomenon. 

Knowing that the Jews are too material to un- 
derstand the Spiritual Issue, Christ refered to their 
own law, asking: “Is it not written in your law: I 


(1) Gen. XV. 9-11. 


132 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


said ye are Gods? If he called them Gods unto whom 
the word of God came, and the Scriptures cannot 
be broken, say ye of him whom the father hath sanc- 
tified and sent into the world: thou blasphemest, be- 
cause I said I am the son of God?” (1) 

From the scriptural text it appears clearly that 
the Word of God, the Logos, was given man at all 
times, that therefore those who received the Spirit 
became the sons of God. It also appears clearly 
that all those who receive Christ, acknowledge Him 
and do His work, are the sons of God, that even 
those who believe in His name and are born not of 
blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of 
man, but of God—are the sons of God. This means, 
of course “‘Rebirth” must be established through the 
Spirit of God and not by “Re-Incarnation.” We 
have thus in the “Incarnation of the Spirit Christ” 
the answer te Genesis III. verse 14-15, for His com- 
ing into the world proved the difference between 
the Natural and the Supernal or Spiritual Principle, 
as well as the fact that the Spiritual Principle 
“shall bruise Satan under your feet’ as Paul phras- 
ed it(2), and do away with the seducing and falsi- 
fying doctrines of the Principalities of the Material 
Spiritworld, which from the time of the first spirit- 
ualized man, Adam, until to day has darkened the 
soul of man. 

If we learn to understand the Manifestation of 
the Spirit then it becomes clear that a Supernal 
Purpose exists in Life, that this purpose leads man 
away from the so called natural or mundane things 
of life, yet at the same time reorganizes the mun- 
dane things by and through the Spiritualizinge Pro- 
cess of the Mind, creating thereby a state in which 
the coarser sins become eliminated and the King- 


(1) John I. 12; X. 35-36: VI. 1-2. Rom. VIII. 14. Gal. IV. 
5-7. Phil. I]. 15. Hos. I. 10. 
(2) Rom. XVI. 20. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 133 


dom of Heaven established upon earth, a kingdom 
in which the “Lion and the Lamb” will peacefully 
dwell together, where all strife ceased. Under- 
standing this, we used the expression “material and 
spiritual evolution,” for life evolves from the lower 
to the higher purposes, and this evolution can be 
clearly perceived everywhere, because it manifests 
itself not only on the material plane but also—and 
more so—in the spiritual spheres. 

The Religion of the Spirit per se is a matter of 
Evolution as the Scriptures prove plainly, for in the 
Old Testament we find this Religion in its very be- 
ginning (1), becoming from time to time more and 
more interpolated by outside influences, until fin- 
ally it asserted itself more strictly in the traditional 
conceptions of the Rabbis of the Great Synagogue, 
holding on to the letter of the law, missing thereby 
the Spirit which so tenaciously worked on the mind 
of the Hebrew race from the time of SEE to 
the time of Jesus. : 

The Spirit Christ could therefore say rightly 
to the Samaritan women: ‘Salvation is of the Jews” 
for the Spirit per se manifested Itself more clearly 
to this race than to any other race before Abraham’s 
time. It was Abraham who in reality was the one 
who perceived the “Higher Purpose” in the Mani- 
festation and followed it, while the seers and pro- 
phets of the various races saw in it only a “material, 
or lower purpose” and followed this phase of the 
manifestation, receiving thus only material things, 
so that their religious systems—while containing a 
part truth evolved the “Wisdom of the Material 
Spiritworld” and by degrees created this which call- 
ed the ‘‘Eastern Philosophies”, produced the “Oc- 
cult”? with all its modern branches. 

The physical part of the phenomenon was, of 
course, still greatly relied upon throughout the Old 


(1) Hebr. VII. VIII. IX. xX. 


134 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Testament, and we find traces of it even in the New 
Testament; but no sooner the Work of Christ begun, 
the physical phenomenon ended, because now the 
Spiritual Law was being fulfilled and the Spirit per | 
se begun to work with “Mental Force.” Spiritual- 
izing the mind this Force became the Agency of the 
Holy Spirit, thus verifying “Jacob’s Dream.” From 
then on the “Angels” (spiritualized souls) begun to 
descend upon man and to serve man, giving man 
the most direct knowledge of that Life which mani- 
fested itself for the same purpose in Jesus. This is 
what Jesus meant when he said to Nathaniel: 
“Hereafter ye shall see heaven open and the angels 
of God ascending and descending upon the son of 
man(1).” The term “son of man” is usually ap- 
plied theologically to Jesus only, although it pro- 
duces a wrangle between itself and the idea express- 
ed with ‘Son of God’, but this is an other theolo- 
gical error, for it means what it implies, namely 
son of man, respectively “‘the human race” and cor- 
responds with other prophesies contained in the 
Scriptures. (2). | 

Just as John the Baptist was the one through 
whom “the way was made straight (prepared,) so 
was Jesus the one through whom “the way of the 
Lord Christ was shown to man”, hence he could say 
of himself: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and tne Life, 
no man cometh to the Father, but by me” (3). 
Jesus was the Physical Expression of the Spiritual 
Issue, no more, but he could not have become this 
without being made holy from his conception, hence 
even in the embroynic state he was. a “Holy Thing,” 
and thus while not perfect, sanctified by the Father, 


(1) John I. 51. 
(2) Joel II, 28-30. 
(3) John XIV. 6. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 135 


vhe Spirit Christ who called him into spiritual exist- 
ence for the purpose of fulfilling His mission. 

To believe in Jesus as the “Innate Son of God’’, 
to believe that he is God, is a dogmatic error, which 
—as shown—originated at a later epoch. It be- 
comes clear that the Scriptures were interpolated 
to meet the issue, but these interpolations become 
nonexistent to all who understand the Manifesta- 
tion of the Spirit, for they need no longer script- 
ural evidence for the TRUTH so vividly experienc- 
ed, and they fully understand the thought expressed 
by Jesus: “He that believeth on me, believeth not 
on me but on Him that sent me.’”’ We have in this 
expression a knowledge which reveals to us that 
Jesus makes a distinct difference between himself 
and the ‘‘One that sent Him,” and if we now look up 
John ch. I. verse 33, we find that John the Baptist 
uses the same mode of expression: ‘And I knew him 
not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the 
same said unto me....” The one that sent John 
was one who was “‘in the spirit and power of Elias,’ . 
a spiritualized Soul-Mind, a ‘Material-Spiritual 
Teacher’ who was chosen by the Spirit of God to 
prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. 

The One that sent Jesus was the Spirit Christ, 
the Spiritual Father of Jesus, who through Jesus 
became also the Spiritual or Heavenly Father of all 
who believe in Jesus, for in the belief on Jesus the 
way to the acceptance of Christ is opened. It be- 
comes thus clear that “no man can come to the Son 
(Jesus), except the Father draw him,” for “the Son 
and the Father are One.” The meaning of this is’ 
very simple: Man in the natural state is not recep- 
tive to ethereal vibrations, yet, no matter how much 
he may reason, his reason will tell him that there is 
Something which seems to point to a Higher Force 
and to a Higher Purpose in Life. Incomprehensible 
as this Something may be to him, he will find that 
by concentrating upon it, it will lead to the Phen- 
omenon, and investigating the Phenomenon, he will 
—by degrees—be led to the understanding of this 


136 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Something and gradually arrive at the Truth. This 
Truth is bound to lead him to the Spiritual Issue of 
Life, consequently he finds himself drawn by the 
“Father” (Personified Spiritual Principle in the 
Spirit), and thus learns to understand the socalled 
Mystery in the Son. 

When Jesus said (John V. 37) : “Ye have neith- 
er heard his (the Father’s) voice at any time, nor 
seen his shape’, he simply stated a concrete Truth, 
a Truth which throughout the New Testament mani- 
fests itself. 

If we learn to understand but part of the Spirit- 
ual Truth the various sectarian ideas no longer af- 
fects us, nor does it matter what the Materialists, 
Occultists and Spiritists think and teach, for having 
been created new and become part of that Truth 
which we no longer can deny, the Scriptures as they 
are before us remain only as an evidence for the 
Manifestation of the Spirit per se. This evidence, re- 
peated to day the same way, compels us to discern be- 
tween this which is of God and that which is of man, 
consequently we reject the silly and unworthy ac- 
counts concerning God contained in the Old Testa- 
ment, but allow them; to remain as records of the 
material side of the Manifestation of the Spirit, be- . 
cause such manifestations correspond with the Phy- 
sical Phenomena of to day. 

If we continue to study this Truth, we find that 
the idea expressed by some of the clergy that “the 
Scriptures are the only proof for the Truth’’, is ab- 
surd, that their idea the voice from the tomb: “He 
is risen” is sufficient for all,” is a statement void of 
all logic. We also will find that the ignorance of 
the clergy not only keeps them from receiving the 
Spiritual Truth and prevents them from receiving 
the Spiritual Gifts; but that through their ignorance 
and hateful disposition toward the Manifestation of 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 137 


the Spirit, they keep the people wilfully from learn- 
ing the Truth. 

We are in possession of the “Talents” (1) given 
us by God and cannot bury them in the soil of the 
_ Seriptures, but must multiply them while studying 

the Scriptures. This we can do only by “turning 
over the scriptural soil,” for only thus can we find 
the ‘““Hidden Treasure.” We cannot do this without 
coming into contact with the Manifestation of the 
Spirit, and thus the Phenomenon is to day still the 
Agency through which God manifests. 

There can be no division in Christ. There are 
no creeds in the Spiritual Spheres. Delusions and 
- ereeds are of the earth earthy, but the Spiritual 
Soul is of Christ, and dwells beyond the earthsphere. 


(1) Matth. XXV. 14-380. 


138 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


- THE ESSENE’S LETTER 


Studying the New Testamental Records con- 
cerning the trial, the death, resurrection, appear- 
ances and ascension of Jesus, we find in them as 
many variances as elsewhere in the Gospels and, as 
previously pointed out, we can take these differ- 
ences to be natural, and considering the probability 
that these stories were first handed down orally 
for years before they were written and finally as- 
sembled iin their present form, we have no reason or 
cause to throw these stories over board because of 
their discrepancies. 

The greatest difficulties for the Thinker lie 
perhaps in this that there are no authentic historic 
records in regard to the person of Jesus, that the 
historians of that time do not know anything about 
him, that Josephus who published a history of his 
country in the year 80 while mentioning Pontius 
Pilate and John the Baptist, knows nothing of Jesus, 
but there is nothing to wonder about at all, for we 
do not believe that-:an American Historian would 
find it worth his while to mention a certain “‘Broth- 
er Isaiah,” who in the year 1920 came to New Or- 
leans to cure people, yet this episode stirred the 
country for quite a period, and practically every 
newspaper reported the matter under heavy head- 
lines. To the writer, having been in New Orleans 
at the time, witnessing some of Bro. Isaiah’s work, 
the scenes enacted there at the river, brought the 
scenes reported to have happened at the shores of 
the Jordan nearly 2000 years ago, involuntarily to 
mind, and the various reports floating around and 
getting into print regarding the work of this man 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 139 


differed as much from each other as do those in the 
New Testament. 

To discard the New Testamental Stories be- 
cause of their differences, or because one feels that 
the various books making up the New Testament 
bear fictious names, i.e. are ascribed to the men 
whose name they bear, is in our opinion not ration- 
al. There is no question that these books contain 
many interpolations, that their contents are trans- 
lations from transmissions of parts of original 
texts rather than translations of the original hand- 
writings of the men to whom they are ascribed, 
which would—in our opinion—not alter the Funda- 
mental Truth contained in them. Authorities claim 
that the King James Version contains 20,000 errors. 

According to a newspaper report dated Naples 
sept. 8, 1924, Commander Delia, superintendent of 
government libraries of that city, discovered a-his- 
tory of the life of Christ and his martyrdom, written 
in 59 A. D. This report states: ‘The discovery is 
expected to create a sensation throughout the world, 
as the new book, ante-dating any previously known 
history of Christ’s life, is said to contain accounts 

of many hitherto unknown incidents.” 
| Thus we may expect many new discoveries in 
regard to these matters and yet increase our doubts, 
for they may not appear more trustworthy than 
those ancient manuscripts from which the present 
translations were made. 

We have before us a copy of a little book, pub- 
lished recently in America, entitled “The Cruci- 
fixion of Jesus by an Eye-Witness” (an Ancient 
Alexandrian Manuscript), which is supposed to be 
a letter written at the time of Jesus by one of the 
Essene Elders in Jerusalem to one of the Elder Es- 
sene in Alexandria. This letter is supposed to be 
an answer to an inquiry from a High. Essene of 
Alexandria as to whether or not Jesus of Nazareth 
is a member of their Order. The Elder of the Es- 
senes in Jerusalem testifying to this, describes the 
circumstances of the birth, work, trial and apparent 


140 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


death on the cross of Jesus, as well as his “‘Resus- 
citation by Dr. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arima- 
thaea.”’ 

Now while the contents of this letter in many 
ways correspond with the Gospel narratives and in 
various ways fill out certain gaps, they take away 
absolutely all of the so called miraculous quality 
with which the New Testamental stories. overflow. 
Studying the translation of this Ancient Manuscript, 
we feel perhaps more at sea than with the Gospel 
Accounts and doubt its contents as much—or even 
more so— because of certain statements made by 
the respective writer, but then here like there, the 
average person will take as a truth that which ap- 
peals to him, and we are quite certain that the Theo- 
sophists, through whose channels this letter came 
from. Kurope to America, will as readily swear to 
its genuiness as will the average Christian swear to 
the genuiness of the Gospels, although he mev know 
less about history and still less about the Phenom- 
ena than do the Theosophists. 

In order to discourse the contents of this letter 
we shall copy verbatim a number of statements con- 
tained therein, and analyzing these statements with 
our knowledge and experience in the Realm of the 
Phenomena, we allow the reader to draw his own 
conclusions. 

The respective Elder of the Essenes in Jeru- 
salem testifies that “Jesus is a brother and member 
of the Essenes, that he taught and wrought great 
wonders, and finally suffered the death of martyrs 
in Jerusalem; that he and John the Baptist were 
taken into the Order in their years of early man- 
hood.” (p. 87). 

According to this Essene the letter at hand was 
adressed by him to the Elder in Alexandria seven 
years after the crucifixion of Jesus and he says 
(nesdysnn .whom we all loved and in whom God 
was glorified. . .As true as the words are that 
pass Over my lips, and the thoughts that I write, as 
verily do I believe from the depth of my soul, that 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 141 


Jesus was chosen by God and begotten by the eternal 
spirit. He called himself the son of God, and he 
proved himself to be such by teaching in the name 
of God.” 

“ ....He was from infancy brought up for our 
brotherhood; indeed he was predicted by an Essene, 
whom the woman thought to be an angel. This 
woman was of a very imaginative disposition, pry- 
ing into the supernatural and mysteries of life, and 
found great pleasure in everything that she could 
not explain rationally. Our brother, the Essene, 
has acknowledged his share in the affair, and com- 
pensated by getting the brotherhood secretly to 
search for and protect the child. And Joseph, who 
was a man of great experience in life, and great 
devotion to the immortal truth, was through a mes- 
senger from our order influenced and advised not 
to leave the woman, nor to shake her belief in the 
sacredness of the matter, and to be a father to the 
child till our brotherhood could admit him as a 
novice.” (p. 40.) 

The writer of the letter claims that he spoke 
to Joseph at Nisan, carrying a message from the 
Elder of the Essenes to him. He states (p. 42) 
that “Joseph proved to be a candid and experienced 
man, and spoke with great judgment. Indeed he 
exhorted Mary to discern distinctly between reality 
and dreamy imagination....It appears that she pos- 
~ sessed a very fiery imaginative mind....Far from 
Joseph blaming her for this, he instructed Jesus in 
knowledge and wisdom, and protected his pure mind 
from getting overstrained through his power of 
imagination.” (p 42.) 

According to the letter after a number of years 
in the monastery of the Essenes, John returned to 
Jutha and Jesus went to Nazareth. 

“His friend Lazarus had a sister “Mary’’, who 
loved him and he, in his heart returned her love. 
But according to the rules, an Essene is not allowed 
to take unto him, a wife after his own desire, that 
the sacred work shall not thereby be retarded. And 


142 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Jesus overcame his love for this woman by his duti- 
ful devotion to sacrifice every feeling of selfishness 
to serve the brotherhood.” (p. 48). 

.... Therefore, my dear brethren, you should 
give God praise, that it has come to pass thus. We 
have kept these things a secret, and not let the peo- 
ple know them, lest the belief in providence should 
be diminished. For you know there are many pious 
and excellent men who have recorded and remem- 
_bered the life and death of Jesus, but have them 
only from rumors, augmented and corrupted by 
superstition; and very naturally they, from rever- 
ence and pity, believe what they hear about their be- 
loved master... .Most of them have heard of it only 
through. tradition, as it is told from man to man; al- 
though there are others that were present, but these 
have given no information relating to these import- 
ant events.” (p. 49). 

Here follows a description of the crucifixion, 
which does not differ much from the Scriptural ac- 
counts, with the exception that this writer states 
“,... they drove through his hands thick iron nails, 
but none through his feet, for this was not custom- 
ary.” He also states that after Jesus was crucified, 
“the heat grew gradually fiercer, more unendur- 
able....the Essene brethren knew, through their 
knowledge of nature and its elements, that an earth- 
quake was coming, as had formerly happened in 
the days of their forefathers.” (p. 54). 

The Essenes tried—according to this elder—all — 
they could to guard Jesus from infancy to the time 
of his end, and so he tells the Elder in Alexandria, 
who seems to have accosted the Essenes in Jeru- 
salem for not having saved Jesus from the cross 
“by secret means”, for he says: “The sacred law of 
our Order prohibits us from proceeding publicly, 
and interfering in politics; besides have two of our 
brethren, influential and’ experienced, used all their 
influence with Pilate and the Jewish Council in be- 
half of Jesus, but their efforts were frustrated by 
Jesus himself, requesting to suffer death for his 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 1438 


faith, and to fulfill the law; as you know to die for 
truth and virtue is the greatest sacrifice a brother 
can bring.” 

We are then told that Joseph of Arimathea was 
a member of the council of the Essenes and that his 
friend Nicodemus (*) was a very learned man, and 
belonged to the highest degree of the order. These ° 
two men examined the corpse of Jesus in the pre- 
sence of John and.... “Nicodemus pulled Joseph 
aside and said: As sure as I know anything about 
organic life and nature, as sure it is possible to save 
him. But Joseph did not understand him, and he 
advised us not to tell John anything of what we had 
heard. Indeed, it was a secret which was to save 
our brother from death. Nicodemus shouted: We 
must immediately have the corpse with its bones un- 
broken, because he may still be saved—then conceiv- 
ing his want of caution, he went on in a whisper— 
aie from being infamously buried.” (pp. 54-55- 

“To be more sure of it, one of the soldiers 
struck his spear into the corpse in such a manner 
that it passed over the hip into the side. ‘The corpse 
showed no convulsions, and this seemed a sure sign 
to the Centurion that he actually was dead; and he 
- hurriedly went off to give his report. But from 
the insignificant wound flowed blood and water, at 
es : ohn wondered, and much hope revived.”’.... 

p. 09). 

....He (Nicodemus) drew Joseph aside to 
where I stood, some distance from John, and spoke 
in a low, hurried tone: “Dear friends, be of good 
cheer, and go to work, Jesus is not dead; he only 
seems to be because his strength was exhausted.... 
But I advise you not to let John know that we in- 
tend to reanimate the corpse of Jesus, for I fear he 
could not conceal his joy; and dangerous indeed 


(*) John III, 1-13. 


144 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


would it be to let the people know it, as our enemies 
would then put us to death, as well as him... .There 
upon, Nicodemus spread powerful spices and salves 
on long pieces of “byssus” that he had brought a- 
long, and whose use was only known to our order. .” 
(p. 60). 

.... In his grief and sorrow John did not at all 
believe in life returning to his friend, and did not 
hope to see him again before “Sheol”... .'The corpse 
was then laid in the sepulcher made in the rock, 
which belonged to Joseph. They smoked the grotto 
with aloe and other strengthening herbs, and as the 
corpse was laid on moss, still stiff and inanimate, 
they placed a large stone in front of the entrance, 
that the vapors might better fill the grotto.” (p. 61) 

? “And the brethren agreed immediately to 
send a guard to the grove. ....One of the brethren 
went to the grave in obedience to the order of the 
brotherhood, dressed in the white robe of the fourth 
degree....When the brother arrived at the grave 
which he was to guard, he rested on the stone that 
he had pulled from the entrance, according to his 
orders, when the soldiers fled and reported that an 
angel had driven them away....And when the — 
brother heard a slight noise in the grotto, and step- 


ped in to watch what would happen...... the youth 
saw with untold joy that the corpse moved the lips 
and breathed.’’.... (p. 62-63. 


.“We arrived thus at the grotto, headed by 
J oseph and Nicodemus. We were in all twenty- 
four brethren of the first degree. Entering we per- 
ceived the white robbed novice kneeling down on the 
moss-strewn floor of the grotto, supporting the head 
of the revived Jesus on his breast....And as he re- 
cognized his Essenes friends, his eyes sparkled with 
joy, and his cheeks were tinted with a light red; 
and he sat up, asking: Where am I?.... (p. 64.) 

.... When Jesus had arrived unto the breth- 
ren’s house he felt very weak; the wounds begun to 
cause him pain. He was much moved, as he con- 
sidered all as a miracle. “God has let me rise” said 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH TH} SON OF GOD? 145 


he, that he may prove in me what I have taught, 
and I will show my disciples that I do live.’”’.. (p.65) 
.“But soon after other women came from 
J erusalem, and stepped up to the grave. Wondering 
greatly, they had entered the grave, and one of them 
in looking for the corpse in the place where it had 
laid, had seen the brother, and terrified, pointed him 
out to her friends. When the other brother also 
came in view, the woman had fallen on their .faces, 
and thought they had seen angels. And the brethren 
spoke to them as they had been ordered by them of 
the first degree, and one of them said to the women: 
“Jesus is risen. Do not look for him here; say to 
his disciples that they will find him in Galilee.”.... 
“The Essenes friends tried to persuade him to keep 
hidden, for his safety sake, and to recover his 
strength, but Jesus felt a great desire to prove to 
his friends that he lived, and of the desire feeling 
refreshed and strengthened, he asked for clothes, 
and received immediately the Essenes working-garb 
such as our brethren wear in their work: dressed 
in which he appeared as a gardener.” (p. 66). 
“And the young brethren had again gone 
to the grave....and there saw the same woman re- 
turn who came first to the grave. .and she thought 
the two novices were angels guarding the empty 
grave, and she wept. One of them, of kind dispo- 
sition, and in a harmonious voice, spoke to the wo- 
man, asking her why she wept. This woman was 
Mary whom Jesus loved and had to leave....And as 
she was lamenting... .stood Jesus behind her, dress- 
ed in the garb of a gardener.....But when he ex- 
claimed “O Mary!” she knew him, and wanted to 
kiss his feet, and therefore embrace him. But 
Jesus felt the pain in his hands and side, feared the 
effects of the hearty embrace, cautiously stepped 
back a few paces, and said: Touch me not. Still I 
live, but I soon shall go to my father in heaven; for 
my body has become feeble and soon shall be dissolv- 
ed, that my death may be fulfilled.”.... (p. 67-68). 
....And Jesus had slowly walked along the 


146 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


wall and reached the little gate that opens to the val- 
ley by mount “Gihon’’, there he listened to the con- 
versation of some women outside the wall. He 
stepped out and the women believed that they saw 
an apparition. But he spoke to them to show them 
that he was himself. And as the youth in the grove 
having told the women that in Galilee they should 
see him, one of them remembering this said to him: 
Lord shall we obey the word of the angel, and see 
thee again in Galilee? This question astonished 
Jesus for he.did not know the brethren had informed 
the novice to name that part of the country. After 
considering for a while he answered: Yes, inform 
my friends and tell them that I go to Galilee, there 
you will see me..... (p. 69). 

.... Having refreshed himself, he said: “Now 
I am strong it behooves me not to live in conceal- 
ment. ‘A teacher ought to be with his disciples, and 
a son embrace his mother.” Joseph answered: 
“The brotherhood is father and mother to thee, ac- 
cording to their promise, and it is the duty of the 
brotherhood to protect thee as its beloved child.” 
And Jesus said: “I do not fear death, for I have ful- 
filled it, and the enemies shall acknowledge that God 
has saved me, and will not that I die eternally.” 
Then one of the Elders of the brotherhood said: 
“Thou are not safe in this country, for they will 
search after thee. Do not, therefore, go any more 
among the people to teach, for what thou hast 
taught will always live among thy friends, and thy 
disciples will publish it. Remain dead to the world; 
the brotherhood has brought thee back to life 
through its secrets, therefore live henceforth for the 
holy order to which thou belongest live in the priv- 
acy of wisdom and virtue, unknown to the world. 
And we will secretly teach and assist the disciples 
among the people, and they shall receive encourage- 
ment and assistance from the holy brotherhood. And 
if the time comes that thou shouldst again go out 
among the people, we will send for thee, and inform 
thee. But Jesus, in ardor of sacred enthusiasm, 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 147 


said: “The voice of God is more powerful in me 
than is the fear of death. I will see my disciples 
once more, and go to Galilee.” Then the Elder said: 
“Be it so, as God has called you; but it behooves men 
to be wise and cautious in good things. Therefore, 
some of our brethren shall go with thee, and pro- 
see thee through our connections in Galilee.” (p. 
71): | 

.... And Jesus took his departure, and set out. 
... Advised by Joseph, they sent a novice to follow 
in his tracks, and on the road secretly inform the 
Essene friends..... And while Jesus was on the road 
to Emaus.... two men were traveling the same 
road....and Jesus said to them “Peace be with 
you”’.....But where they stopped they retained 
Jesus.....And at the common feast of love in the 
house, they recognized Jesus; but he did not wish to 
be known in this place, and secretly passed through 
the door, and went to the house of the Essene friend 
to whom he had been recommended.” (p. 73). 

.... But by this time our brethren of the 
brotherhood in Jerusalem remembered the promise 
they had made to Jesus to protect his disciples, and 
strengthen them in their belief in the resurrection 
of their master, and had been informed that not all 
the disciples were convinced of the resurrection of 
their master. And one of them that doubted was 
Thomjas, who was a great thinker, and had received 
his education from the Essene brethren.” (p. 79). 

.... And Jesus conducted them, to the place 
he most liked, near the summit of mount Olive,.... 
And the chosen disciples believed that he would con- 
duct them to Bethania. But the Elders of the 
brotherhood had silently come together on the other 
side of the mountain, ready. to travel, waiting for 
Jesus as had been agreed upon. And he exhorted 
his disciples to be of good cheer, and firm in their 
faith. He prayed for his friends that he had to 
leave, lifting his arms and blessed them. And the 
mist rose around the mountain, tinted by the de- 
scending sun. Then the Elders of the Essene sent 


148 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


word to Jesus that they were waiting, as it was late. 
And as the disciples knelt down, their faces bent to 
the grass, Jesus hastily rose and went away through 
the gathering mist; and when the disciples rose, 
there stood before them: two of our brethren in the 
white garb of our brotherhood, and they instructed 
them not to wait for Jesus, as he was gone, where- 
upon they hastened away down the mountain.” 
(p. 90.) 

.... But in the city the rumor came out that 
Jesus was taken up in a cloud, and gone to heaven. 
This was invented by the people that had not been 
present when Jesus departed. The disciples did 
not contradict this rumor, as it served to strengthen 
their doctrine, and influenced the people who want- 
ed a miracle for to believe in. But John, who was 
present, knew all about it, but he has not spoken nor 
written anything about it. Likewise Matthew.”’.. 
(p91) : 

.... ‘But in Jerusalem none knew that Jesus 
had returned to the solitude of the Order except 
John and Matthew....Joseph and Nicodemus had 
been with him the last time when the sixth full 
moon was waning, and they came to our brother- 
hood aS we were preparing to partake of the feast 
of love....and their hearts were sorely grieved, 
for the chosen one was taken up into the heavenly 
dwellings of his father.....And he was buried by 
the physician close by the “Dead Sea” as bids the 
regulations of our brotherhood.” (p. 93.) 

The little book from which we copied the fore- 
going fragments contains also a description of the 
Order of the Essense with their oath of which Num- 
ber Two reads: “Do justice to all men,” and Number 
Seven: “Cherish the truth and unmask all liars.””— 

If now the writer of this letter was:an Essene, 
then its contents prove that he did not fulfil number 
two and seven of this oath, that according to his 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 149 


own statement the Essenes of this particular time 
were but common liars and deceivers. The reader 
can thus discard the whole matter as a fraud mani- 
pulated either at the time the letter is supposed to 
have been written, or during a later period. 


150 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


LET THE PHENOMENA ANSWER! 


The greatest difficulties experienced by Clergy 
and Laymen lies in the Phenomena, which they can 
not fathom, hence reject. This obstacle once re- 
moved will clear up the so called “mysteries and 
miracles,” and bringing before them Laws of Na- 
ture of which they thus far know nothing, they will 
learn to understand the things of which they have 
been talking so illogically, and which they have been 
trying to prove true by the logic of absurd dogmas. 
The Theosophists, on the other side, through whose 
channels this letter came, would drop most of their 
silly ideas, were they really honest to themselves 
and, instead of listening to misguided minds (called 
‘“Masters’’), would investigate the Phenomena and 
thereby come in Contact with facts instead of with 
“‘fancies.”’ 

As Spiritualists we stand squarely upon the 
“Phenomena”, no matter what the various Scien- 
tists, Clergy, Materialists or Magicans may claim. 

Understanding their difficulties in reasoning 
out the Abstract, we can have no quarrel with them, 
although we expect such readers to be at least open- 
minded enough to study the phenomena directly be- 
fore jumping to conclusions unworthy a rational 
thinker. 

Confessing “Spiritualism”, we are far from 
subscribing to the things generally taught in the 
name of Spiritualism, and our book on the Psychol- 
ogy of Mediumship places us in quite a different 
class not only in regard to ‘‘Mediums”, but also in 
regard to “Investigators.” 

If there is a Life after Death, then that life 
must manifest itself to us here under the Laws of 
Nature, consequently to receive such manifestation 
we must learn to understand those laws of nature 
which govern such manifestations. Having learned 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 151 


to understand these laws we have become this which 
commonly is called a “Medium”; but this does not 
imply a “silly, morbid person’, neither does it mean 
to become a “fakir.”’ We have simply become “One 
who stands between the Two Worlds”, one who be- 
came “sensitive to the vibratory forces which exist 
on a different plane around us.” 

There are neither “Miracles, nor Secrets or 
Mysteries” contained in the Scriptural Texts, 
neither is there anything “Supernatural” in the 
Sacred Writings of the Ancients. The whole matter 
appears very clearly a matter of Natural Laws. 

Knowing the fundamentals of the Phenomena, 
we uphold the Phenomena described in the Scrip- 
tural Texts, although we admit that these texts are 
badly interpolated and in some instances even falsi- 
fied for a “pius purpose’, and finally explained by 
the clergy in accordance with their respective creed. 
Understanding these fundamentals we, of course, 
explain these texts in accordance with the experi- 
ences made to day, which are the same as yesterday. 

The main idea of “the Letter of the Essene 
Elder in Jerusalem to his Brother Elder in Alexan- 
dria” seems to be to prove that Jesus was a member 
of the Order of the Essenes and, in ascribing to that 
Order great knowledge of Occultism, to make it ap- 
pear that whatever knowledge Jesus had was given 
him by the Masters of the Essenes. 

Whether or not Jesus was an Essene is of little 
importance. If he was a member of the Order then 
he proved that he was of a much higher moral quali- 
ty then the Essenes of Jerusalem, for he was not 
given to lies and deceptions. 

The writer of this letter claims that the Birth 
of Jesus was predicted by an Essene, whom the wo- 
man (Mary) thought to be an angel.” He states 
that this woman ‘“‘was of a very imaginative disposi- 
tion, prying into the supernatural and mysteries of 
Life.” 

No matter how imaginary this woman may 
have been, it hardly stands to reason that she should 


152 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


be so unbalanced as to look at a man and take it for 
granted that he is an angel, and we may ask: “Did 
Daniel see and converse with an Essene when he 
saw a certain man clothed in linen”? (*) (Dan. Ch. 
X. 5-9.) It would also appear rational to believe 
that the same Essene, predicting the birth of Jesus, 
would also have predicted the birth of John, his 
cousin. One can assume that this particular Essene 
was the real father of Jesus, at least such an idea 
is in a veiled way contained in this paragraph. Why 
should the Brotherhood of the Essenes take such an 
interest in a child yet to be born, and afterwards 
“secretly search for and protect this child?” Why 
should this Brotherhood of the Essenes send ‘‘a mes- 
senger to Joseph for the purpose of influencing and 
advising him not to leave the woman, nor shake her 
belief in the sacredness of the matter?” Let us say 
that this particular Essene was the father of Jesus, 
he wilfully deceived not only the woman (bringing 
her under his hypnotic influence), but he and the en- 
tire Order of the Essenes in Jerusalem deceived and 
kept on deceiving the people of their time. Whether 
or not one imagines that this Essene was the real 
Father of Jesus, the fact remains that these Kssenes 
wilfully deceived the people of their time, and this 
alone should prove that the writer of this letter, be- 
ing an Essene of the same Order in Jerusalem and 
an “‘eye-witness” to the things described by him, is 
also a deceiver, consequently untrustworthy. 

It is our firm belief that the Essenes were 
neither liars nor deceivers, that they would never 
have consented to “pull off such ridiculous stunts” 
as described by the “eye-witness”, and while we can- 
not know how “genuine” this Ancient Alexandrian 
Manuscript is, we have no reason to doubt that it 
was written by somebody at some time, perhaps 
even at the time given, but we perceive clearly that 





(*) Acts. X. 1-35. 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 153 


it was written for the purpose of discrediting the 
phenomena as pictured and related in the New Tes- 
tament. To make the contents of the Jetter more 
acceptable, the writer injected here and there vari- 
ous expressions of sanctity in keeping with the New 
Testamental records. 

We must not forget that the Alexandrian ideas 
were at those days well established and that the 
apostles had their greatest troubles with those who 
were well acquainted with these doctrines. Even 
to day the Theosophists, while admitting the Phen- 
omena, do not recognize its Fundamentals because 
such would utterly destroy their concepts of life. 
It is therefore the attempt to make the phenomena— 
as described in the New Testament—unreal, res- 
pectively the attempt to give the matter a natural 
turn by stating the Essenes did arrange this or that, 
which brands the contents of the letter the pro- 
duct of a person wholy unfamiliar with the Funda- 
mentals of Psychic Science, an imposter, for the Es- 
senes knew better. ) 

Present day investigations prove beyond a doubt 
that the Phenomena are based upon laws thus far 
known to man only in a vague way, and this not- 
withstanding the fact of the numerous fraudulent 
mediums. This being so, it will take but little study 
of the subject to find that we cannot only attune our 
brain to the forces surrounding us, but that we also 
can so develop our sensitiveness as to hear and see 
these forces. Jesus often used the expression 
Nae eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye 
not ?”’— 

Attuning our brain to the vibrations of that 
world which, surrounding us is a part of our world, 
we can hear and see this which lives (or is) in that 
vibration to which we can most readily attune our 
sensitiveness. The more we develop our sensitive- 
ness to the higher vibratory forces, the more we 
come in contact with things that dwell, or exist, in 
that sphere. Ss 

This being so, it is quite clear that no Essene 


154 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


was required to play Angel with Mary of Nazareth, 
for she was attuned to the external vibratory forces, 
and this more so to the Highest vibratory force pos- 
sible to come in contact with upon earth. She was 
a “Psychic”, and by her virtues “One sanctified by 
the Highest Force’, consequently the embroynic 
Jesus was a “Holy Thing’. To use modern language, 
Mary was clairvoyant and clair-audient. 

Psychics, Seers, Prophets or Sensitives have 
at all times “heard and seen” those who have lived 
upon this planet and passed into that world which 
penetrates and surrounds our world, and this long 
before the Order of the Essenes came into existence. 
So do the Psychics of the present age. 

To the natural and to the biased man the con- 
tents of this Alexandrian manuscript will appeal 
chiefly because it attempts to explain “supernatural 
things” in the most natural way, yet, not under- - 
standing (or unwilling to learn to understand) the 
laws which govern the phenomena, the natural and 
the biased men are not able to judge the truth, hence 
they should ‘hesitate using this letter for the purpose 
of proving their own contention. 

The Unbeliever, i.e. one to whom the things 
commonly called “Super-Naturalism” are the pro- 
duct of morbid minds, may be a very deep thinker 
and as honest himself as are those who believe every 
word contained in the so-called Bible, as being in- 
spired personally by a personal God, and yet not 
think deeply enough, making the same mistake they 
make by believing what appeals to them most, there- 
by refusing further educational arguments. 

Since the phenomena are abstract and concrete 
only to w certain extent, the natural man as well as 
the biased man is incompetent to use his reasoning 
power here. The phenomena and the laws which 
govern them are strictly speaking beyond the human 
intelligence, because human intelligence no matter 
how highly developed, has its greatest faults in al- 
lowing itself to be influenced by traditions as well 
as by opinions expressed by others. For instance 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 155 


the Rationalists are still harping on the strings pull- 
ed by Huxley and Paine, and repeating some of the 
utterances of Ingersoll, they think themselves so 
far advanced in rational thought that to them the 
laws of the phenomena, which are natural pee are 
but the product of morbid minds. 

While Huxley, Paine and Ingersoll as well as 
others have been greatly responsible in making the 
common thinker think more for himself, and while 
such men have been instrumental in starting the 
mental exodus from the Supernaturalism of Ortho- 
dox Christianity, they fell victims of their own il- 
lusions because, attacking something of which they 
felt that it was not only silly but insulting to all 
human intelligence, they in their sincerity of attack 
forgot that there may be some underlying principle 
which may be responsible for the existence of a 
Fundamental in Belief. Had these men used the 
same energy to study the possibility of such a prin- 
ciple, they would have not only achieved the same 
thing, but they also would have been able to receive 
the proof for the existence of such a principle; as 
it is, they seemed to have utterly failed in their en- 
deavor, for not only are there to day more believers 
in the Bible than there were in their days, but it 
can be statistically proven that Occultism, Spiritism 
and Spiritualism have become factors throughout 
the world. 

Huxleyan thought and the reasoning of Paine, 
as well as many other sources have produced a New 
Theology, which with its modern conceptions of an- 
cient ideas has done as little harm to the old time 
Belief as the former, for Modern Theology is and 
will remain a Minority as long as its defenders are 
unwilling to study the laws of the phenomena. A so 
called Modernist has the nerve to claim that the Im- 
maculate Conception, the Temptation, Transfigura- 
tion, Atonement, Appearances and Ascension of 
Jesus are an insult to his intelligence, but he has not 
enough nerve to study the laws governing the phen- 
omena, and thus crucifying the Truth on the Tree 


156 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


of Intelligence, the Modernist thinks himself to be 
not only wiser than his orthodox brother, but pos- 
sitively more tolerant. 

If the Modernist and Orthodox Clergy would 
dare to study the laws which govern the phenomena, 
they would soon see their mistakes, and while the 
Modernist would find that there are no miracles in 
the accepted sense of the word, the orthodox clergy 
would find the same thing true. If they then would 
come together and reason over the result of their 
studies and experiences, they would find that the 
things which happened thousands of years ago do 
still happen, that God manifests to day like yester- 
day, that these manifestations are always the same 
in their fundamentals and differ only in regard to 
individual interpretation or explanation, the same 
way as it happened to be at all times and will be 
until the phenomena can be studied in a scientific 
way by all concerned. 

The fundamental issue is neither God nor 
Christ if we speak of the phenomena as such, for, 
to quote Paul: ‘‘This which is natural comes first, 
the spiritual afterwards.” It should appear very 
clearly that as long as we cannot bring positive 
proof for the existence of a Life after Death, all 
arguments in regard to Immortality, Eternity, God 
and Christ are futile. | 

Let us not forget that our planet Earth is but a 
mere speck in the great universe, that life as ex- 
pressed upon earth, finding its highest manifesta- 
tion in the brain of man, is but a small part of that 
force which man never will be able to comprehend. 
To think speculatively leads us nowhere, and Theo- 
logy is at its best but a Speculative Science, and as 
such depends entirely upon the moods and whims of 
the philosophical mind of those clergy who are in 
power to formulate their opinion into a_ creed. 
Where, on the other hand Theology became a politi- 
cal force, the clergy representing that force became 
usurpers—the mouthpieces of God—and dictating 
thus to the state and the people, both state and peo- 





IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 157 


ple, lost their right to think for themselves. In. 
either case Theology forced its own ideas upon the 
masses and kept them in ignorance. Philosophical 
as well as political Theology reduced its own intelli- 
gence by stubbornly adhering to misconcepts, while 
so called Modern Theology, trying to approach the 
old time difficulties in a purely scientific way, is 
neither political nor philosophical, is merely intel- 
lectual. 

Christian Theology claims to treat divine 
things, to establish the relationship between man 
and God, and yet it does not know the first principle 
of that relation, or rather it does not dare to know 
anything about this particular relationship, always 
fearing that its dogmas may suffer by the result. 
As we have seen before (p. 69) Theology believes in 
Revelation and Inspiration, yet it does not dare to 
find out how such is done. Theology tries to reason 
out some things in a natural way, but refuses ab- 
solutely to become natural, in short, Theology has 
not arrived anywhere, it has utterly failed. 

The most direct way out of the theological wild- 
erness is for the clergy to study the phenomena, to 
find out for themselves whether or not it is of the 
Devil, and thus to prove to themselves and the world 
at large whether or not their Devil-Idea conforms 
with a Pure Concept of the Belief in God. 

The Phenomena in their various ways are and 
remain the only positive proofs fora Life after 
Death, and these proofs once received will gradually 
clear up all the difficulties experienced by the Theo- 
logians. The more these proofs are brought into 
man’s life, the more the result of such investigations 
are taught in the respective colleges, the more a 
complete Truth will be established. The most or- 
thodox clergy will find that, while he loses many of 
his old cherished ideas, the proofs before him will— 
while destroying his dogmas—bring back the apos- 
tolic age and firmly establish Christ and His Teach- 
ings upon earth, creating thus the very “New Heav- 
en and New Earth” spoken of by Him so propheti- 


158 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


cally, the “Old Heaven and old Earth—being the 
ones created by the poets, the philosophical clergy 
and the people, for under the New Order Of Things 
the Powers of the World to come are revealed to 
us through this which we now call “Phenomena.” 

If it is so essential to Theology to préach and 
teach things pertaining to an After-Life, if it is a 
necessity to Theology to preach from texts full of 
this which commonly is called “Supernaturalism,” 
then it must be of the utmost importance to Theo- 
logy to know more about it than we have had handed 
down to us by obscure writers, by men who admit 
to have destroyed, suppressed and interpolated these 
transmissions of original texts. It would seem that 
the Theologians would be the very men who would 
investigate the Phenomena and to teach the result 
of their investigations, but this is not so, for to them 
it is simply the work of the Devil, and feeling rather 
contented with the product of their mind, they 
either wash their hands like Pilate or write silly 
things about the matter, because they have read of 
tricky mediums, or their investigation (if there was 
such) has brought them, into contact with such 
fakirs. 

God works through the agency of man, and man 
as the agent of God needs money to continue the 
work of God, consequently God uses the money made 
by man honestly or dishonestly for the purpose of 
establishing His Kingdom upon earth, yet the apos- 
tles continued the work begun by their Master very 
successfully with the help of the Spirit, proving with 
their Spiritual Gifts all things to those who wanted 
to know, by demonstrating the very power the pre- 
sent day clergy deny to be of God and denounce as 
coming from the Devil. 

Christianity would have never been able to es- 
tablish itself if it had not been for the handful of 
First Christians, who meeting secretly continued to 
search for the Truth given them by their Teachers, 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 159 


the Apostles, and that they had ‘‘Spirit-Communion” - 
the Scriptures plainly prove. 

To claim that God walked around upon earth 
either in form of a man or in the form of an angel, 
ate and drank during Old Testamental days, that 
the people of the New Testamental times saw and 
conversed with angels, and to claim that there is to- 
day no such necessity, is—in our opinion—the most 
direct proof for the theological inconsistency of 
thought. | 

The socalled biblical Supernaturalism is based 
upon natural laws, and these laws work to day the 
same way as they did then, but we of the twentieth 
century have lost some of our superstitions and, no 
longer being ruled by a political Theology, we have 
learned to think for ourselves, consequently investi- 
gating the Phenomena we find that the Natural 
Phenomena and the Spiritual Phenomena are close- 
ly linked and resemble each other. 

In speaking of the Phenomena, as we must, we 
discern between this whichis natural and_ that 
which is spiritual, and so we claim that the result 
of our investigations proved to us that there is a 
difference between the terms immortal and eternal, 
that to have an immortal soul does not mean to be 
endowed with eternal life in the scriptural term, 
that biologically speaking man’s soul differs not at 
all from the soul of the worm, for man is made of 
the same matter the worm comes from. 

The breath of life which in the creation story 
differentiates man from the animal is but a symbo- 
lic term and means in psychic interpretation “a part 
of that force which in Christianity is termed Holy 
Spirit.” This Holy Spirit is—as we have already 
explained—of necessity in the Discarnate Ego, in 
the manifesting messenger or angel of God, and this 
messenger was at all times a former human being, 
a man or woman; but now we must not forget that 
during the stages of spiritual evolution sex ceases 
to exist as such, even if in the higher mani- 
festations Life expresses itself in ‘‘male and female” 


160 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH TH ESON OF GOD? 


due to the fact that those who dwell in the higher or 
spiritual spheres (mansions) were men and women 
upon earth. Having outgrown the sexual vibra- 
tions (which are elementary) these soul-minds are 
in the strictest sense of the word the Children of 
God and have all the Power of the World to Come. 
They are the Spiritual Guidances of man to day the 
same as they were the Spiritual Messengers of olden 
days, who then were called Angels and even God by 
the Old Testamental Prophets or by the Scribes who 
recorded their deeds. We now can understand why 
the Ancient Hebrews believed God to be a man, why 
they had their God even inspire murder and lies, for 
now we have learned to discern between the natural 
and the spiritual phenomena and know that the Pro- 
phets whose God was a Liar, a Deceiver and a Mur- 
derer, had a ‘material contact with disembodied 
Egos” who were of their kind, that they were not 
governed by Discarnate Egos. 

The intellectual man may well ask why his de- 
parted mother should want to communicate with 
him through a “medium,’, instead of communicat- 
ing directly with him, but the same intellectual man 
will go to his neighbor to listen in on the radio, be- 
cause he himself has no radio. Now whether or not 
his mother has the Desire and Will to communicate 
with him, we do not know, for we do not know 
whether or not she has risen from. death, i.e. has re- 
covered consciousness, but we do know that he can 
come into contact with those that have risen and are 
willing to communicate, be this through the sensi- 
tiveness of a medium or by developing his own sens- 
es. 

For all the thousands of years the air was full 
of waves, carrying sound silently, yet only recently 
these waves were gathered, so to speak, and made 
audible to man all over the world; but it takes an 
apparatus for the purpose, and the human brain has 
been such an apparatus from the beginning. There 
are short wave radio sets and coast to coast sets, 
each of them has to contend with the laws of nature, 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 161 


with static, but once the various stations are proper- 
ly loged, the operator can usually come into. contact 
with whatever station he wants to connect if that 
station is on, provided always that there is no inter- 
ference. 

Attuning our brain to the waves or vibrations 
of the unseen life around us we have to contend with 
very similar conditions and much depends upon our 
own mental condition, upon our mental wave-length. 
If our brain is like a short wave radio set we re- 
ceive whatever is contained in that wave length, and 
this has been thus at all times. Coming into con- 
tact with souls of the earthsphere we are in con- 
tact with life as such expresses itself upon earth and 
consequently with the wisdom of that plane, which 
is the natural or animal (elementary) plane. This 
does not mean that we come into contact with de- 
vils, it simply means that the things we receive from 
there are worldly, concern more directly man in re- 
lation to his life upon earth, which takes in every- 
thing of the human life, religion included. 

The natural phenomena have always come from 
the earthplane, while the spiritual phenomena have 
at all times come from the planes far beyond the 
earthsphere. The former, while they have at times 
brought to man Sublimity, never brought him Spir- 
ituality, hence in analyzing the phenomena we must 
discern between the two manifestations of the 
Spirit. 

Disembodied Egos have, like Discarnate Egos,. 
at all times manifested to man, but man has not 
learned to discern between them before the coming 
of Jesus of Nazareth of whose work and life we have 
but a very meager description, and being forced 
more or less to either believe or disbelieve the apos- 
tolic accounts, we cannot form an opinion justly 
without studying the present day phenomena. 

Knowing that the phenomena are true, and 
knowing the difference between the material and 
the spiritual manifestation, we do know that while 


162 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


they are the same in the fundamentals, they differ 
in application as well as in result. 

The prophet Samuel, while still a child and 
sleeping in the temple, heard a voice. He was neith- 
er mocked by the priest Eli, nor was he dreaming, 
and when Joan of Arc claimed to hear voices, she 
was neither mentally deranged nor hypnotized. 
Reading in the Old Testament of the “Pillar of Fire 
and the Pillar of Smoke,’ we know that those who 
had eyes to see saw what they claimed, but under- 
standing the manifestation, we claim that the re- 
spective clairvoyants saw a. discarnate Ego, or a 
disembodied Ego for that matter, that this guidance 
showed the way as described, and we base our state- 
ment upon similar experiences made by us. 

If we read the story of the “Burning Bush,” we 
uphold this story because we saw a table burning 
the same way without being consumed. If we read 
the story of “Pentecost,” we look up the Old Testa- 
ment and find that the same thing happened in 
Moses time (Num. XI. 16-17. 25-29) and we have 
seen the same thing happen daily in our surround- 
ing. Reading of the Transfiguration and of the 
Appearances of Jesus after death, as well as of vari- 
ous biblical appearances of “angels or men’, we are 
not all wondering, for we have seen such with our 
own eyes, and so have we heard voices. 

There is in our opinion no use to deny the phe- 
nomena, neither is there any sense in the idea ex- 
pressed by some magicians that because they can 
produce certain phenomena (?), the phenomena 
given through the channels of mediums are untrue, 
even if we admit that many of the mediums have 
faked some of them. It is also absurd to state that 
Occultism, Spiritism and Spiritualism have produced 
or produce crimes, but it is true that fraudulent 
and criminal characters have misused these Isms 
for their own purposes much the same way some 
people have used and do use Christianity for their 
own ends. It is further true that unscrupleous peo- 
ple entering the realm of methaphysic very fre- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON'OF GOD? 163 


quently tie themselves to disembodied Egos of the 
lowest caliber, due to their own peculiar character- 
istisc and desires, but under the law of attraction 
they could not do otherwise. This we have thor- 
oughly explained in our book on the Psychology of 
Mediumship. : 

If the present day phenomena are not able to 
hold their own, then is absolutely no hope for man 
ever to prove to himself the Truth given him by 
Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles, and we say 
with Paul:....‘‘Now if Christ be preached that he 
rose from the dead, how say some among you that 
there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there 
be no resurrection of the’dead, then is Christ not 
risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preach- 
ing in vain, and your faith is also vain.” (I. Cor. 
XV. 12-14.) Paul explains such things very thor- 
oughly in this chapter, and Paul was the foremost 
expounder of Spiritualism among the apostles. The 
study of the present day phenomena proves Paul 
correct and testifies also to the Truth given by the 
rest of the apostles and experienced by the first 
Christians. 

How the Christian Clergy can preach Christ 
and the doctrines of the apostles and at the same 
time discard the Phenomena, is more than we can 
understand; how they can be contented with the 
wisdom of their synods and colleges is beyond our 
comprehension; neither can we fathom how any 
clear minded person can imagine “a star to move 
and finally to stand still above a certain house to 
show certain wise men, coming from somewhere of 
the East, the place wherein they should find the new 
born King of the Jews. It is also incomprehensible 
to us how anyone can imagine that Jesus ascended 
bodily (in flesh and blood) into heaven, but then to 
the theologically twisted mind, which is phantastic 
enough to believe and to make it a dogma of salva- 
tion and damnation that God is a person, a man, the 


164 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


most absurd things are the things which appeal 
most. 

If the clergy would study the phenomena then 
they would find that the “‘Star of Bethlehem was a 
Spirit-Light,” the nucleus of which appeared to be 
in form of a star, signifying that the discarnate Ego 
' who thus manifested to the Magi (who were clair- 
voyant, hence mediums) wasa great Spiritual 
Teacher, and one of the many chosen Teachers to 
- announce the coming of the Messiah to those who 
were receptive, and there were—according to the 
meager scriptural reports of spiritual phenomena— 
many persons at that time sensitive to such mani- 
festations. 

If we learn to understand Modern Phenomena 
then manuscripts like the Essene Letter prove them- 
selves either rank falsifications or the product of 
persons: who are wholy ignorant in matters of that 
kind. We will also find that these phenomena, be 
they of the lowest material kind, or of the more re- 
fined and most spiritual kind, prove beyond a doubt 
an existence after so called death, that this exist- 
ence is to most of us first a matter of Self-Condem- 
nation because of our own nature, that there is, 
however, the Law of Evolution still at work, that 
therefore we can still “save ourselves” by realizing 
and evolving the Spiritual Principle in us. This 
Principle will after so called death demand more at- 
tention than before. We will also find that because 
of our animal nature we are—after the resurrec- 
tion—still animals, if we have been unwilling to 
counteract the baser desires while still in the natural 
body upon earth, hence resurrect like the animals, 
and gradually disappear from the Plane of Life. » 

We should now be able to understand the idea 
of the “Resurrection to Condemnation, and of the 
Better Resurrection’’, as well as the idea of a “‘Sec- 
ond Death.” 

Paul, understanding these things very thor- 
oughly, said in I. Cor. Ch. XV. 35-58: “But some 
man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 165 


what body do they come?.... There is a natural 
body, and there is a_ spiritual body..... The first 
man is of the earth earthy: the second man is the 
Lord from heaven.....As is the earthy, such are 
they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, 
such are they also that are heavenly. And as we 
have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also 
bear the image of the heavenly.....O death where 
is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?....” 

There is a natural and a spiritual body. The 
term natural means the “first soul-body,” or 
“anima” in which all animal life resurrects. The 
term spiritual means the “second soul-body” or 
“etherealized body,” which is free from all earth- 
matter in that sense of the word. It becomes then 
clear that, speaking of two resurrections, the first 
resurrection means the one common to all animal 
life, while the second resurrection means the Better 
Resurrection, an advancement from the earth con- 
ditions. The original body of flesh and blood does, 
therefore, not come into consideration any more, 
for that body has positively ceased to exist as far 
as Life as such is concerned. (see Psychology on 
Mediumship p.p. 12.-15. 42. 50. 56). 

Until the time of the Manifestation of the 
Spirit Christ in and through Jesus, man knew only 
of the Common Resurrection, but this knowledge 
was chiefly in the hands of the priests, prophets 
and seers, who used it for the purpose of ruling the 
kings and the people, who in turn used the former 
for their own purposes, mainly to find out what God 
had in store for them. Where ever it happened that 
a common person had the “Spirit”, that person was 
at once condemned by the priests in power, who 
created a “jealous, a terrible God.” | 

Learning to discern between the Material and 
the Spiritual Phenomena, we find that the former 
deals chiefly with man as such, while the latter deals 
absolutely with man’s inner self, with his innate 
spiritual sense. We then find that there are two 
distinct so called Principalities dividing the After- 


166 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


Life, that the Lower Principality is of the Earth 
earthy, and contains all things pertaining man’s 
natural life; while the Higher concerns itself in the 
main only with Spirituality. 

The Ruling Force of the Lower Principality is 
of necessity the “Spirit of the Earth”, respectively 
the ‘“Thought-Unit” of the things earthy, which is 
animal-like or evil, and which became personified 
in the disembodied Egos (former men and women) 
who resurrected and remained in the earthsphere, 
to dwell in that condition. This Principality has as 
many conditions as has the earthplane and each 
condition has its own particular ruler. Tartarus, 
or Hell, is within this spheric condition, and like the 
earthsphere itself, this particular condition is creat- 
ed by man and not by God. 

The Ruling Force of the Higher Principality 
is the Essence of God, the Holy Spirit, which mani- 
fests Itself of necessity in and through all who dwell 
there. This Higher Environment has many condi- 
tions in regard to Holiness, it has many ‘“‘mansions”, 
and each mansion has its own particular ruler. From 
these environments the spiritual teachers have come 
to man at all times, giving man as much spiritual | 
understanding as he could mentally digest, conse- 
quently we find in all religious systems a certain 
similiarity, which even in the lowest phenomena 
manifests itself the world over, for the lower prin- 
cipalities have at all times more directly manifested 
their existence to man than the higher principali- 
ties, due first to their closer connections with man, 
and second because of man’s own nature. 

The Phenomenon be it material or spiritual, has 
at all times proven to man the higher purpose of life, 
and if man has not learned to comprehend this pur- 
pose, it is not the fault of the Phenomenon. 

Learning to discern between the lower (mater- 
ial) and the higher (spiritual) phenomena, we, of 
course, also learn to discern between spirits, and 
thus we begin to understand why St. John said: 
““. .try the spirits whether they are of God’’. In John 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 167 


Ch. IV. 1-6 he brings out the difference very strong- 
ly, and verses 4 and 5 deals directly with that differ- 
ence. His expression: “‘....greater is he that is in 
you, than he that is in the world....’? means the 
Spirit of God, the messenger or disearnate Ego 
(Spiritual guidance), in contrast with the Spirit of 
the World, the disembodied Ego (material guidance) 
or messenger from the earthsphere, of whom he 
says: “they are of the world and the world (natural 
man) heareth them.” 

Here then we have solved positively the so call- 
ed mystery of Inspiration, and now we understand 
why it is necessary to discern between the Material 
and the Spiritual Inspirations. There is no argu- 
ment left, for the Truth of this proves itself to all 
who are willing to make the experience. 

Having received this proof we will by degrees 
understand the higher purpose of life and by de- 
grees we will also become convinced that there is a 
“Council of Good” as well as a “Councii of Bad”, 
that the latter is not bad or evil as a whole, but has 
its evil influence because it deals chiefly with man’s 
animal nature, with the things pertaining directly 
to man’s natural desires; but since this Council 
takes in man’s whole material existence, it has with- 
in itself man’s own vices. consequently it is in the 
lowest form represented as a “Direct Evil” which 
can produce but Evil. This Evil is not pre-existent, 
it is transfered into the earthsphere by former evil 
man and evil women. 

Speaking of God, we cannot describe God, we 
can not fathom God, and stating that God is a Spirit, 
we can not describe Spirit, because Spirit in this 
sense of the word is absolutely beyond man’s reason- 
ing. We can directly refer to man after so called 
death as “Disembodied Ego or as Dis-Carnate Ego” 
because both are very tangible to us if we properly 
investigate the phenomena. We can also speak of a 
Council of Good and of a Council of Bad, because 
these councils are represented in those with whom 


168 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


we come into contact while investigating and devel- 
oping our sensitiveness. 

We refer now the reader to PP. 94 to 96 and 
ask him to carefully study the contents of these 
pages. 

Knowing the difference between the material 
and the spiritual phenomena and their respective 
results in regard to inspiration, we know that the 
messengers of the Material Spiritworld, bad or 
good, (the term good means here natural like man) 
not having the breath of life (spirituality), rob man 
of his spiritual inheritance by teaching false doct- 
rines in regard to the After-Life in general and in 
regard to Christ in particular, stealing thus from 
man what rightfully belongs to him. 

In this we have the full explanation of Christ’s 
words: “‘All that ever came before me are thiefs 
and robbers.” If we can learn to understand the 
difference between the material and the spiritual 
forces, then we can fully understand why at Christ’s 
time the Alexandrian doctrines not only conflicted 
so much with the teachings of the Master, but we 
also see clearly why their expounders set themselves 
against Him and His apostles, for we have on the 
side of the latter that concept, which derived mainly 
from the result of the material phenomena, could— 
while recognizing a certain Sublimity therein—not 
become clear in regard to an absolute Spirituality 
and the source from which such could emanate. Their 
difficulties, like those of the Theosophists, are to be 
found rather in the misunderstanding of the material 
phenomena, than in non-belief, and this (we think) 
the philosophies of the Gnostics show plainly. 

Being a believer in the phenomena because of 
its manifested results can not mean very much, and 
to speculate on the results means even less, for 
while believing and speculating may lead to the truth 
if one makes the experiences himself, mere beliefs 
and speculations rather bring out a diversity of 
thought than actual facts. This we must bear in 
mind when reading the Bible, because it does not 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 169 


stand to reason that the writers of the various re- 
cords knew much of the phenomena by actual ex- 
perience, but wrote about and copied such records 
because they believed in the result of the phenomena, — 
some parts of which they may have witnessed. There 
can also be no question that many foreign ideas crept 
into these writings, ideas which the modern thinker 
cannot combine with the character of Jesus. 

To wrangle theologically over a so-called spirit- 
ual truth without understanding the Fundamentals ~ 
of the Phenomena, to wrangle over such matters 
without knowing more about it than do some Scien- 
tists who dabbled for a certain number of years in 
so called Spiritualism, is—in our opinion—mere 
arrogance, which must produce ignorance of the 
worst kind. To accept anything like the letter of the 
Essene already referred to as a fact, without being 
willing to honestly study the phenomena, or to claim 
it to be based upon facts because theosophistically 
speaking it appeals to ones reasoning, simply means 
that one does not know anything of the Phenomena. 

Whether or not all things in the Bible -happened 
as they are described is of no moment, however if 
we claim that because it is written in the Bible that 
Jesus ascended bodily, i.e. with his natural body of 
flesh and blood, into heaven, or that he ate and drank 
actually during his various appearances after death, 
then we simply do not understand the most simple 
chemical laws, neither have we a very clear concep- 
tion of this which is called Phenomena. 

TO MAKE ONES SALVATION DEPEND- 
ENT UPON SUCH A BELIEF IS CRIMINAL! 

Since the laws under which these phenomena 
happened never change, we make the same exper- 
jiences to day, and we claim that only those who were 
clairvoyant did see Jesus rise (leave the earth- 
sphere.) We do not doubt that Jesus, appearing to 
his disciples while they ate and drank, felt their de- 
sires and expressed himself mentally thus, suiting 
the thought with the action (movement) to fulfill 


170 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


this desire stimulated from the outside. We, how- 
ever, dispute that Jesus spoke to them audibly, and 
claim that only those of the disciples who were clair- 
audient heard his voice. 

According to our studies of the phenomena we 
know that NO ESSENES WERE NECESSARY TO 
STEAL THE BODY OF JESUS FROM THE 
TOMB. NO ESSENES WERE NECESSARY TO 
REVIVE HIM. NO ESSENES WERE NECKES- 
SARY TO TAKE HIM AWAY THROUGH A MIST, 
for the present day phenomena proved to us beyond 
a doubt that the body of Jesus was actually con- 
sumed by a “Vibratory Force’ coming from the 
highest spiritual environments, because we do know 
that such a force acts like and is like the strongest 
current of Electricity. We also do know that when 
Jesus appeared to his friends and disciples, he did 
not appear in any different way than do those who 
—having risen from their graves—appear to day to 
those who are clarivoyant, and sensitive to their 
vibrations. 

Knowing and understanding the laws of the 
phenomena, we disclaim all Super-Naturalism and 
state that such never existed, because under the 
laws of nature all things are in full conformity with 
the principle of these laws. Nothing supersedes 
nature, not even the spiritual principle, for this prin- 
ciple does not work outside the natural laws. 

Man being first subjected to nature as such, 
is also subjected to the spiritual principle, but man, 
being by nature first of all a higher animal, can- 
not on his own accord come into contact with the 
spiritual principle because his material senses pre- 
vent him from doing so, but he can and does come 
into contact with the natural or material principle, 
and due to this fact he at all times was (and still 
is) a worshipper of nature, of things that are natur- 
al, thereby losing sight of the spiritual. In this we 
can clearly preceive the reason for man’s desire to 
have Naturalism even in the present day beliefs, al- 
lowing himself to believe God to be a man, imagin- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 171 


ing spiritual things to be natural (material), to 
give spiritual things a natural turn and to claim 
dogmatically that Jesus is not only the Son of God, 
but God. 

# ; These ideas made of Christianity a Pagan Be- 
ief. 

Speaking of the nature of Jesus and claiming 
that he was man and God, means to confuse things. 
Jesus was and remained a man, but he was chosen 
by the Highest Spiritual Power man can come in 
contact with, to become the vessel through which 
the Spirit known as “Christ” (the one who came 
from Above in contrast to those who before came 
from Below, from the material spiritworld) could 
work and fulfil the Spiritual and the Natural Laws 
by showing man the way to the Better Resurrection. 

Being chosen, his mother was chosen first, and 
her selection to bear and bring forth the One who 
should be instrumental in carrying the Burden of the 
World for the sake of its Salvation, she, Mary, is the 
one “highly favored with whom the Spirit of the 
Lord was, and thus she was the most blessed among 
the women.” | 

The Divine Nature in Jesus is the Spirit Christ, 
who as the Highest Spiritualized Soul-Mind incar- 
nated Itself in the mind of Jesus, thereby becoming 
“flesh’’, i.e. audible to man. Through this incarna- 
tion Jesus became One with the Spirit Christ, and 
since Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God who 
ever incarnated, Jesus became by virtue of selection 
and grace the Son of God also. 

Justine Martyr was therefore right in his con- 
ception (see p. 12), and we are convinced that he 
was the most ardent student of the phenomena of 
his time. 

Being the Way to the Better Ressurection, Jesus 
the man showed us the Light which should lead us 
outward and upward to Spiritual Understanding 
and thus to the Mansions of which he spoke to pre- 
pare for us. Weas men can, of course, not come to 
that understanding unless the Spirit draws us to- 


172 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


ward it, hence, while we are receptive only in a 
natural way to the things that are natural, this 
natural receptivity can be so developed as to come by 
degrees into (to use a modern expression) the wave- 
length of the Spiritual Principle, and this means 
that we can receive the Holy Spirit to day as of old, 
and thereby become the Sons and Daughters of God. 

God, the chief principle (or God Head), in 
sending out its Vibrations created the ‘‘Word” 
(Logos), which, becoming active, manifests through- 
out the Spiritual Spheres, and selecting there in the 
Highest ‘Sphere the most spiritualized soul-mind 
for Its Mission among the race of man, created thus 
the “Christ Spirit,” which Itself is “God in Essence, 
for It emanates from God and constitutes the Holy 
Ghost or Holy Spirit. The Christ Spirit, respec- 
tively the Holy Spirit, is therefore the second part 
of the Trinity, while the One who became the “‘Sel- 
ected One” to carry out God’s Mission upon earth, 
as the Most Holy of all spiritualized soul-minds, be- 
came there-by the “Only Begotten Son of God who 
ever was sanctified (authorized) by God to show 
man the way to the Better Resurrection.’ This 
makes the Spirit Christ the third party of the Trini- 
ty. Jesus, having become One with Christ, is thus 
at the right of his Spiritual Father Christ, hence 
(in essence) in and with Christ One with God, but 
never God. 

Jesus never claimed to be Son of God as dog- 
matic Christianity wishes it to be, refering to him- 
self always as being the son of man, but the Spirit 
Christ, speaking through the organism of Jesus, did 
call Himself the Son of God. True, Jesus could have 
used the same expression rightfully, because he be- 
came the Son of God through his Spiritual Father 
Christ, and this more so than all of those who become 
the sons of God because the Word of God (Spirit of 
God) is given them. 

Jesus rose from death and showed himself to 
his friends under the laws of nature the same way 
millions of risen souls did before and after him, con- 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 173 
sequently it is not his being risen from death (in this 
sense of the term) which magnifies that act, but the 
fact that he rose from that death which surrounds 
all those who rise to Condemnation, which he over- 
came, and which gave him the true Victory over that 
death. Showing man the way to the Better Resur- 
rection, he, Jesus, became the true Salvation to man. 

In the fourth chapter of Thessalonians Paul 
says (v. 17): “Then we which are alive and remain 
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, 
to meet the Lord of the air, and so shall ever be with 
the Lord.”’ 

The “‘which are alive and remain” means those 
who have the Spirit of Life (breath of life), hav- 
ing risen from their grave to the first spiritual un- 
derstanding within the earthsphere, their former 
sphere of activity, and remain there until the ‘‘Sec- 
ond Resurrection” (ascension to the _ spiritual 
spheres), when they will be caught up in the clouds 
(spiritual vapors as produced by all discarnate 
Egos) and thus meet the Lord of the air (the invisi- 
ble divine influence, in contrast to the Prince of the 
air, the invisible influence of the earthplane), and so 
shall ever be with the Lord, while those of the com- 
mon (animal) resurrection live under the laws of 
nature, after rising from the grave, within the 
earthplane, subjected to the laws of nature, hence 
suffer death either by gradual extinction or by re- 
maining “earthbound.”’ 

That the dead rise from their grave and mani- 
fest themselves to man the phenomena prove to day 
like yesterday, but we are not refering to the phen- 
omena paraded before the eyes of credulous people 
by spurious mediums, we speak of these phenomena 
which manifest themselves to man outside so called 
Materialization Seances, and which can be had in 
ones own home without the help of professional 
mediums and fortune-tellers. 

To rise from death means to live upon the next 
higher plane, just outside the material plane of life, 
and to be closely connected with that plane. This 


174 IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 


is a resurrection common to all animal life, even to 
the worm. Itis the resurrection of the soul made of 
the Dust of the Ground (matter). The life of this 
plane has only a chemical duration, dissolving and 
renewing itself in an elementary way, hence it is 
not Spiritual Life, therefore Christ said through 
Jesus of Nazareth: “I am the Resurrection and the 
Life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live.. 

The material ‘phenomena, no matter how low 
and subtle they may be, prove the resurrection of 
the dead to a new life, consequently even these phe- 
nomena hold the key to the better understanding of 
Christ’s teaching and positively prove that there is 
a higher purpose in life than the natural man has 
thus far dared to imagine. This being so, it should 
stand to reason that to aspire the Better Resurrec- 
tion is and remains the chief duty of man, that, how- 
ever this duty can not be fulfilled without the Belief 
in Christ, who as the Son of God became our Spirit- 
ual Father through His Incarnation in Jesus, the 
pone man and direct Spiritual Ruler of all man- 

ind. 

Thus then we know that the Spirit Christ is the 
Son of God, the In-Carnate Word which was from 
the Beginning, not as a person, but as an Essence 
emanating from God. We thus know that Jesus 
of Nazareth as the son of man became the Bearer 
of the Word, and as such the direct fulfilment of the 
natural and the spiritual law, consequently the Son 
of God by proxy as well as the direct Intercessor 
between man and God. 

To the reader, who may be a strict believer in 
the Bible as a book personally inspired by a personal 
God, the contents of our book will appeal as little as 
to the one who glories in being a materialist, but 
then we can not sacrifice our knowledge received 
by practical studies of the Phenomena to suit them. 
If the former studies his Bible a little more thor- 
oughly he will find that the Bible as a whole is based 
upon the Material and the Spiritual Phenomena, 


IS JESUS OF NAZARETH THE SON OF GOD? 175 


that if the Phenomena were to be taken out of the 
Bible we would be minus the Hebraic History of the 
Phenomena as such presented themselves to the He- 
brew Leaders, Prophets and Seers, and we would 
lose the Foundation upon which the Phenomena of 
the New Testament rests. 

We, of course, admit that we tried to explain 
something exceedingly abstract, yet the Bible-Wor- 
shipper believes even things he can not fathom at 
all, contented with the idea that “God does not want 
him to understand all things.” If this is true why 
then did Paul say: “Even the mystery which hath 
been hid for ages and from generations, but now is 
made manifest to his saints.” (Col. I. 26.) 

Our point of view is that God has given us 
reason to use, that God has given us the Phenomena 
for the purpose of teaching us the Eternal Truth, 
that these phenomena are to day the same as yester- 
day. Since the present day phenomena prove them- 
selves true, since they are “catholic” (belonging to 
everybody), they are the Keys to the doors of know- 
ledge, which the Church for many centuries has wil- 
fully kept out of the peoples reach. 

Peter found that God is not a respecter of per- 
sons, and Cornelius, a Roman and a Heathen, al- 
though he believed in God, experienced the Phen- 
omenon with the most practical result in the same 
way as we do to day. 

If the Phenomena prove what we claim they 
prove, if they are in harmony with the experiences 
of the apostles (as we know they are) why believe 
a thing merely because it is written in a2 book con- 
taining only fragments of translations of transmis- 
sions of original texts and denouncing as untrue the 
same things which are always around us? 

Paul says in II. Thess. Ch. V. 19-21: “Quench 
not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove 
all things; hold fast that which is good.” 








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